1. Spring brings an end to frigid temps - but the beginning of wardrobe uncertainties: Do I wear jeans and risk heat stroke when the temperatures unexpectedly reach summer-esque highs, or do I wear shorts and risk freezing my- yes, well you get the picture...
2. Spring brings the return of green leaves and colorful flowers - but also brings the return of that sinister substance known as pollen. The mere sight of that telltale green layer coating anything and everything either stationary or nearly so signals my nose and lungs to instantly rebel and refuse to allow sufficient passage of air.
3. Spring brings breezes carry the sweet melodies of birdsong after a long and music-less winter - which is welcome, except when the blasted things choose to twitter their melodies nice and loud right outside my bedroom window on the rare mornings I'm able to sleep in.
So, I do have some fairly contradictory feelings toward what many call the season of rebirth. But there is one part to spring that I dread most of all:
...the return
...of
...BUGS!!!
Yes, I mourn the passing of winter most of all simply for the fact that in amongst all this love/hate rebirth stuff lurks all manner of undesirable creepy crawlies. And they all seem to think that my house is the perfect place to hang out.
The biggest nuisance are the big, black flies that manage to weasel in one door or another despite my best efforts to keep them out. I can't stand that buzzing, and they taunt me - taunt me, I tell you: always zooming right by my head and just on the edge of my vision, then zipping out of sight. Then they bzzzt around behind the blinds or inside a light fixture, or behind a plant, double-dog-daring me to come get 'em. It creeps me out. I chase them down with a twirled up old hand towel - 'cause I can't stand having to clean up smashed fly guts off an icky, guts-crusted fly swatter - and manage to catch most of them. The hardest ones to get are the little suckers that haven't grown into full-grown, gross, big 'ol slow flies. Man, are they hard to towel-snap. And let me tell you, that stuff you read about the common housefly only living 24 hours? Well, my flies must be most uncommon, 'cause they sure hang on a lot longer than that in this house.
Next on the nuisance-o-meter are those teeny tiny ants that begin to parade over my main floor, without fail, just as the weather turns balmy. Last spring was the worst: they were boldly traipsing in looooong lines through my foyer, milling around, and going nowhere in particular. So, I declared war. Armed with a butter knife and some spackle, I followed those little soldiers to the source, and smugly plugged up the hole, then smashed the stragglers with the flat of the knife. Figuring that was that, I put away my arsenal. Later that afternoon: "Mooommmmy! Ants!" Crud. They found a new hidey-hole to come through. Out came the knife and the spackle. Plug, plug, smash, smash, smash. The next morning, they not only found a third hidey-hole to come through, but they had also managed to bust through the other two spots I spackled the day before! This continued to the point that I spent the entire time the kiddos were at school chasing teeny tiny ants and hastily spackling holes and crevices, until I realized they had fanned out to three rooms, and showed no signs of stopping. Admitting defeat, I bought a bunch of ant traps, set them by all the hidey-holes, and that finally did it. I hunched down and watched them crawl enthusiastically in and out of this new supermarket I seemingly installed just for their culinary delight, whispering with glee, "That's it, my pretties. Come and get some tasty goodies..." I have to say, though, I can't figure them out. Not one of those ants went anywhere near my kitchen. Go figure.
Here is an unwelcome visitor more creep than nuisance: a crunchy bug that skitters across my basement family room floor every once in a while, usually when I'm down there after dark, watching tv. I don't know what they're called, but they are these inch to inch-and-a-half long, hard-shelled, bullet-shaped, black, beetle-looking things. They're fast little suckers, and if you flick them, you hear the click as they bounce off the walls. You can't smash them by ordinary shoe-whacking, either. (And yes, I keep a spare heavy shoe down there for just such an occurrence.) You have to really slam down on them, and you can actually hear a sickening crunch when the whack actually works. Gross. I can't even bring myself to do it anymore. In fact, once, when C (my husband) was away on business, and one of them went scuttling on by the tv, I trapped it with an upside down glass, and stacked three thick books on top of the glass. Then I called C's cell phone, and told him I had a bug for him to kill when he got home. (You can imagine his response. He wasn't due back for two more days.) And do you know, when he came home and dutifully went down to dispose of the interloper, that bug was gone... with the glass still firmly held down by the big thick books. I didn't go back down there for a week.
Finally, another basement invader. This one is by far the most creepy: big, black, silver-dollar sized wolf spiders. Yep - thick hairy legs, huge bodies, and fast as anything. I get the willies just typing this. Ick. And get this: they actually run toward you when you come after them! To this day, I won't put my feet on the floor when I watch tv after dark in the spring. I sit all coiled up on the couch, one eye on my show, the other scanning for big, black, scuttling spiders. And if I'm alone when one rips by, I just let it go. Listen: anything that willingly comes skittering right at something thousands of times its size that's wielding a big, heavy shoe to crush it, well, that is the definition of fierce, my friend. And I for one am unwilling to challenge guts like that. Uh uh. Nope. Not me. Besides, maybe it'll eat that *&%##@ fly I haven't caught yet...
