Shudder To Think

I had to kill a roach this morning. It was the first one I've seen in my apartment ever, the building owner must be neglecting the pest control bill like she's neglecting the elevator - which is STILL not fixed, by the way, it's been six months. So I got the bug spray, which I usually employ on spiders, and nuked the cockroach, totally soaked it in what is essentially bug nerve poison.
   I followed it for a while to make sure I didn't lose it, and it eventually expired in the front hall, on its back, legs curled up, the classic roach death pose. I left it there while I got busy revising a book and printing out a manuscript for submission to an agent (remember this post?). When I got around to picking up the roach corpse it had been a few hours since I killed it. So not only was it dead, it was, as we say in Texas, good 'n dead.
   But when I got the paper towel and picked it up, I still shivered, a good long shudder that shook me from head to toe.
   Somebody needs to figure this reaction out. I know for a fact that this roach is now an ex-roach, it's moved along the karmic path to whatever its next incarnation is, and I was the agent of that demise. But I still raced to the trash can to throw it away, just in case it decided to scurry out and run up my arm.
   Why? What's so visceral about bugs that a grown man can get squeamish and girly when he has to dispose of a tiny little body?
   That's it, I gotta toughen up. Maybe I'll crawl into a sleeping bag full of rattlesnakes or something, that's man stuff right there.