I think I just saw Wee ‘Burb carrying the portable vacuum cleaner and telling her fellow daycare dwellers “This is my ‘Nam, man, this is my ‘Nam.”
It started innocently enough. Since we bought our house a few years ago, Scott and I made the decision to live upstairs, despite their being a really nice master bedroom downstairs. It was born mostly of not trusting the little ones we planned on having not to burst into flames in the time it would take us to get upstairs. Monitors schmonitors, we went for proximity.
So we had no problem giving the room up to my friend who’s living with us awhile. Really we’d only been using it as a second closet and storage area for a ton of crap. Apparently, so had the bugs. My friend was nice enough not to mention it for a few months, but then she finally broke down and asked for a portable vacuum. Our regular one doesn’t have a hose, you see, and she’d been attempting to kill bugs with an old issue of Food Network Magazine, but it wasn’t cutting it anymore.
She had an invasion. I felt bad, and gross, and kind of dirty. But I just gave her the vacuum and let her loose. And left a few new magazines downstairs…the newer ones have more oomph when you smack the spiders, I hear.
Well, the troops moved North and it ain’t pretty. Internet, meet my enemy!
Wikipedia will tell you it’s known as Boisea trivittata, but around these parts it’s known as the Box Elder Bug. Wikipedia also says “In late spring and early summer, groups of 50-200+ bugs may gather on house siding or brick, usually in a sunny spot. A month or two later there may be pairs of them mating, connected end to end, also in groups of three and four.”
So, let’s review, shall we? These damn things are having a bug orgy on my house, and the single dateless losers are taking shelter in my house…or, well, my vacuum as the case may be. And it’s OCTOBER! That’s neither spring nor early summer. WTF?
I had read a mixture of soap and water can do the trick, and Wikipedia agrees. But, let’s face, it, the man who took Caddyshack-like measures to kill a freaking gopher that was only TRYING to get into the house was not going to take the actual invasion lightly.
All I know is, he came in with a jug of something yellow and poisonous-looking, nodded and walked out the back door. And I’m informed there have been few sightings since.
All Scott is willing to say is “the price of war is eternal vigilance,” but he looks pretty smug, so something tells me nuclear actions were taken.
3 comments:
Eeeew! I know the bugs were here first and that they all play their own little essential role in the ecosystem, but I want them gone anyway!
I have to tell you, I agree with Scott. I can't stand bugs so I think whatever measures are necessary should be taken :).
omg i am terrified of your enemy!
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