Eyes adjust to the darkness as bare feet pad along the carpeted floor. Stepping into the kitchen, a sickening crunch can be heard as a foot makes contact with the linoleum floor.

Bright light floods the room, and a high-pitched scream echoes off the walls. A squashed brown puddle is all that remains of a creature whose name inspires hatred in the hearts of millions.

The cockroach.

Hayley Dawson, a graduate student in computer science, said while she doesn’t mind most insects, she absolutely hates roaches.

“I can’t stand them,” she said. “They are disgusting little things that I want nowhere near me.”

Unfortunately for Dawson, she had a roach infestation during her junior year at her Kensington Park apartment.

“I moved in at the beginning of June, and that fall when the bugs tend to come out, I started seeing a few roaches … in the apartment,” she said. “I tried to clean up, [but] that didn’t get rid of them.”

According to Dawson, she reported the problem numerous times to the complex authorities, but even when they came out and sprayed, it never did any good.

“I was calling them at least once a week, and they’d spray about every other week for a while,” she said.

The worst part of the infestation was knowing how many diseases the roaches carried and how fast they bred, Dawson said.

“You couldn’t turn on the kitchen light without seeing 50 of them … [and if you tried] to sleep on the couch, one would be on you and wake you up,” she said.

Although she and her roommates finished out their lease, Dawson described the entire situation as “horrific.”

Students on campus are also not strangers to insect issues, according to Caroline Douglass, a junior in chemistry.

Douglass had an infestation of millipedes during her sophomore year in Wood Hall.

“We told our RA, and he said it was happening in a bunch of other suites and he didn’t think he could do anything about it,” she said.

To keep the bugs at a minimum, Douglass said she and her roommate vacuumed literally every day.

“[My suitemate] had taped the base of her room to limit the amount of bugs coming in. The third day [of school] I taped the perimeter of my room and it worked, but bugs kept coming in the door,” she said.

According to Douglass, the worst part of the infestation was when she took a shower, as well as having them crunch into the carpet when walking in bare feet.

According to John Ashley, who is in charge of pest control for University Housing, millipedes are hard to control because there aren’t many pesticides for them.

“You are getting clean in the shower and there are bugs,” she said. “There was nothing we could do.”

Though she also dealt with the same problem her freshman year, Douglass said it wasn’t as bad then. She said the problem is mainly a fall issue, as the bugs die off in the winter and don’t return in the spring.

Ants are the most common bugs with which residence halls have trouble, Ashley said. He said roaches used to be a problem, but in recent years ants have been the biggest issue.

A former bug-phobic as well, Katherine Mantzouris, a senior in zoology, said she has made her peace with creepy crawlers.

After taking general entomology, Mantzouris said she has a better appreciation for insects.

Dealing with the occasional unwelcome intruder is no cause for alarm, according to Mantzouris.

“If it’s a big [bug], I let it sit on my [broom] and I throw it outside. If it’s a little one … I flush it down the toilet,” she said.

Although she has not personally dealt with an infestation, Mantzouris said based on her experience, she would probably just “rid them with chemicals.”

Following her entomology class, Mantzouris said she has a calmness with bugs most people do not possess, which was one of her favorite things about it.

“I’m not afraid of bugs, and [other] people are,” she said.

To avoid having bug infestation, Ashley said students should make sure they regularly empty their trash and recycling and keep their rooms neat. He also said eliminating cracks around windows helps prevent bugs from entering rooms.

Features Editor Kathryn Parker contributed to this article