The Story Behind This Photo #2

West China Part Four - 08, originally uploaded by ehdtstudios.

This is one of my most memorable photos from China. It captures a wonderfully redundant event humourously and seriously.

You see, this hotel room was INFESTED with cockroaches. It was terrifying trying to sleep whilst they were crawling up on to the bed and all over the walls and floors.

Fed up with the insanity, Eddie called the front desk at 1:00am to come fix the abomination. A gentleman arrived promptly wielding a very large can of poison. I was half awake, and half asleep while he sprayed the perimeter with this stuff. However, I was quickly awoken in a mad fit of coughing. I threw open the window and hung out the fifteenth story to try to relieve the tickling in my throat...

I was so frustrated with the lack of sleep, and over-abundance of cockroaches that I began doing what any insane person would do -- play with fire.

Cockroaches are, well...cockroaches. They are incredibly resilient, persistent, and prevalent filth with two goals in mind; Procreation, and annoying humans. So I decided to burn them.

I captured cockroaches in glasses and then slid a burning match under each cup-- filling it with Carbon Dioxide, suffocating the creature inside. Barbaric yes... amusing? Hell yes.

I'll admit it was a morbid, and rather unnecessary method of disposing the roaches, but it was actually the only feasible process of actually killing the little sons-of-bitches that I could conceive at 1:50am.

The photo illustrates my frustration perfectly. I grabbed an envelope from the complementary stationary and scrawled a short letter (in english of course) to the management. Whether or not this message was conveyed to administration or not is still a mystery. However, I feel that if SOMEONE regardless of their position in hotel staff, or native tongue spotted that letter -- they at least got the point.

And yes, the specimen is a real cockroach, with real matchstick residue surrounding it.

I felt the need to take the picture...and that's the story behind it.