Our Texan experience is a bit different. We've already fought off a colony of red ants and been visited by a Locust Borer Beetle, which is quite pretty and whom my friend Helen named Marco. And in the past few days a bunch of belly-up exoskeletons were discovered in the garage. The latter really had me squeamish. I'm already obsessing about making sure the kitchen is spotless before we head to bed, and as soon as those little buggers made an appearance I started double bagging the garbage - no damn cockroaches inside, please! Gross, yuck, ick, shiver, and ewwww, I hate bugs!
Flash forward to this morning, as I amble on down the stairs I notice an out-of-place dot on the carpet in our tv room, which adjoins the kitchen. Ugh. I was hopeful that it was a giant piece of lint, or a puff from the carpet, even, please god, a large crumb from the brownie I devoured the night before while watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with Mr. Tex-Eck. Nope. As feared, it's a belly-up critter, still wiggling the front most right leg as though gasping for me to save it. No. Way. In. Hell was I about to touch it. Thank goodness for renting - a quick call to management later in the day and the exterminator is on the way.
As I'm waiting for the bug-buster I keep walking past this creature and wondering if I should pick it up or dispose of it. Does the bug guy need to see it? Need to know where the death occurred? Is this like insect CSI? Remember - Seattle, no bugs? As the afternoon goes on and no bug dude has arrived, I decide to put the thing in the trash. And that's when I learned a valuable lesson. Had I picked the thing up earlier I would have seen that it was not, in fact, a cock-a-roach (just me, or does Scar Face echo here), but instead was a June-bug. Trust me, from the belly they look alike. Lesson learned and easier sleep achieved.
K.
