Things that bug me

I'm not a coward, at least relative to, for example, a real coward. I choose my battles wisely and am brave to a fault when it comes to standing up for certain principles. I defend the down trodden, and will risk all I have to save others.

Unless you're a bug. God, how I hate bugs.

Mostly, I hate spiders. With all those legs and their smug sense of satisfaction. But bees are pretty high on that list also. And flies. And those bugs that we call godzillapedes because they have all those legs and rumor has it, they tend to destroy Tokyo. And you know what other bug is on my list? All of them.

"Sure," you say, "They are small and for the most part, harmless. They are afraid of you more than you are of them."

See, here's the problem with your logic:
1. their brains are teeny-tiny. There is no place in there for awareness of me and my bug-squashing potential, let alone a complex emotion like fear.
2. if they were that afraid of me, they would stop coming near me and into my house which is clearly marked with my name on the front door.

I once heard some statistic that you are never more than 6 feet from a spider, even in your house. I had to go buy a new house. (Notice how I avoided the "6 feet but 8 legs" type of joke. Your're welcome.)

So this morning, I went into the bathroom to do the kinds of things one does there and I heard a buzzing. Since we have recently been infested by flies, I expected to find a fly. Instead I saw, buzzing against the window, a bug which I recall from my time in the Paleozoic era. It had a wingspan of about t---h---i---s and a long translucent body and spindly legs. I tried taking a picture of my phone and then using the Google Goggles app to identify it. The phone came up with the message "Man, that's a huge bug. Don't stand there taking pictures. Run." I tried opening the window so it would fly out. Though I hate bugs, I do usually try to set them free. I hope they will report back to their superiors that I'm a good egg, and they will leave me alone in the future. I remember when we were first infested with Indian Meal Moths. We trapped them in cups and eventually, Cosco ran out of cups. Only then did we buy spray. And move out of the apartment.

I opened the window, but if you recall, bugs have those teeny-tiny brains. It ended up falling in between the panes of class and was unable to climb out. I tried lifting it up by closing the window, hoping that if it didn't get lifted up, at least it would get smooshed. That way, I could claim that I didn't mean to kill it and it was the window's fault. Apparently, whoever designed our replacement windows factored in a bug-haven -- a gap just large enough to hold this particular bug safely and snugly. So I have a stupid, but comfy bug. I'm planning on starving him out or possibly smashing the window with a hammer and hoping he gets cut on a shard of the window plastic and contracts some infection and eventually gets gangrene and dies. Again, not my fault; I was trying to set him free.

And anyway, how in the world did he get into my house and all the way upstairs to the bathroom (the door of which was closed)? This is a bug which couldn't find the open window in a closed room, but somehow he got IN to my house? If I had found him near the front door I might have assumed that he had a key, or came in on that day's mail. But he ended up in a closed, interior room. I have visions of a Mission Impossible type group of bugs sneaking into my house. This is not the image of safety and security I had in mind when I invested in real estate.

I was at my brother's house yesterday and he commented that he had had problems with various bugs. He mentioned carpenter bees (I think it is a union thing) and he had a can of spray so he could take care of the problem. This can, according to its own PR, sent a spray up to 27 feet in order to kill bugs. I like that. No bug getting within 25 feet of me would be excellent so I'm thinking of attaching a set of cans of this spray to the exterior of my house and making a chemical perimeter. Just call before you come over so I can create a channel for you to enter through.