Insectos

Insects abound at night.

Every night here it's like a reunion of bugs. It's SO sick. You kind of just have to live with it, I've realized, because parts of the house are always open. The living room area with the TV, dinner table, a couch, and some chairs doesn't even have a solid door to the outside. One wall is completely not there, save for a gate that can be shut at night. That combined with the oldness of the house and the food that is sometimes left out, the bugs just have a field day.

Mainly, the bugs consist of ants and cockroaches. Now, I'm not normally annoyed by ants, but last night, it was really sick. I turned on the light in the kitchen (which is always a scary thing, because often, you'll hear scattering noises) and I was thirsty, so I went to the sink. The first thing I see is a bunch of ants crawling in and around the sink. Ugh. But whatever, it's not too bad. I then pick up a glass that I'm thinking about cleaning and drinking from (I wasn't sure if it was mine before so I was just going to clean it to make sure). So I pick it up and look in. I see at least thirty, maybe fifty ants in there, crawling ALL over it. AGH. It freaked me out so I quickly put it down and succumbed to the calling of the straight-from-the-faucet water in the bathroom.

The same night, as I'm in the kitchen, I saw a few cockroaches. One was on this little plastic cup thing, just hanging out. I tried to reach out and pick up the plastic cup so I could bring it to the toilet to flush him. But he knew I was coming and VERY quickly scattered to another side of the cup, then off the cup, then into the shadows that cockroaches thrive on. Then I turn around and see one on a banana that they had lying out. At first I think it might be just sitting there, but I look closer and I see that he's kind of pulsating and his head is sort of buried in the banana. He was literally SUCKING it out. SICK. So I just turned off the light and went to my room.

The sickest thing about that banana-cockroach thing is that this morning, I looked at the banana again, and it had a hole in it about a centimeter in diameter. Oh man he went to town. And I looked inside and it was all hollow where the whole was. That just really grosses me out. It's like he ate the entrails.

Luckily, there have only been a few bad bug cases in my room. Most often, it's in the kitchen. Or wherever food is. So one day I had a few candies and left the wrappers out on my bedside table. That must have been what attracted them, because that was the first night I saw bugs in my room. It was later at night, when I turned the light back on, that I heard the distinctive scattering noise, paired with a flash of black running across the floor to hide in the shadows of something near the wall. Fortunately, there isn't really a great place to hide in the room. So I found the cockroach and smashed him with my shoe, followed by a satisfying toilet flush. A little later, I was trying to open the blinds to let the air in, and as I start to pull them open, a cockroach literally FALLS from the top of the blinds directly onto my bed. I try to quickly get him off, but then I lose him. OH GOD. WHERE IS HE. I do NOT want him in my bed. Fortunately, a second later, I see him fall to the ground and run under my bed. I move the bed away from the wall and at first can't see him. AGH. I guess he got away. But no, with a little closer look, I see him hiding under some wires. I try to get him but again, he runs behind some other shadowy stuff. I keep coaxing him out of the shadows until I finally get him too. Oh man, this guy had a pus pocket expel from his body as soon as I crushed him. It wasn't liquidy and didn't spill on the ground. It looked like a bubble of pus that was just connected to his body. So it was easy to clean up and bring to the toilet, fortunately.

The only other bug story in my actual room so far was last night. I had left a cup in there from which I had previously drunk some sweetened iced tea. Just that sweet film left on the inside of the cup was enough. When I picked it up later, I looked in and there were these TINY bugs crawling inside. HUNDREDS of them. I quickly brought it to the sink and washed the hell out of that cup. A person couldn't have even survived the flood that I made that cup go through. Then I drank out of it.

Lesson learned: don't EVER leave food out in my room (reminds me of the time I had Fast Break bars in my room in Bloomington and I woke up to the sound of mice eating them).