Trial by Bug

I know many of my faithful friends have given up on me and will never visit "Crayons" again, as a result of my having neglected to post anything new or even remotely interesting in quite a while. It's a terrible disappointment to me to go to a blog I enjoy reading and find it resting on the same post week after week (example? You know who you are, Dawn Cwynar!!)

Well, this morning I have a story to tell.

Michael and I, over the course of our nearly 11 years together, have had many experiences with critters. In our first apartment we had what we called our "welcome home roach". Every time we were out for the evening, upon our return there would be a single roach waiting for us in some part of our apartment. One time we returned and didn't find our little friend waiting for us...until we pulled down our sheets to go to bed!!!

Then, in Cullman we shared our abode with a family of squirrels. We could hear them rustling and eating through our wires above our heads while we watched TV. Once when I was cooking dinner on the stove I heard a thump in the vent above the cooktop. Michael went up into the attic with (unbeknownst to me) a pellet gun. The poor squirrel had fallen down into the vent and was trapped. Michael shot him in the vent...while I was cooking dinner...and squirrel fur puffed out all over our dinner and the dead squirrel was hanging out, bloody, over whatever it was I was cooking. I think we went to Chik-fil-A that night.

Then, right after we moved here to Monroeville, I was folding clothes in the girls' room and heard a strange sound. I stopped and looked around, but found nothing. Then I heard it again...nothing. Then I saw it - a giant black and blue lizard on the carpet right next to me. I had to call Michael home from work to get it. I know now it was a "skink". But I don't care, and neither should you.

All that to say (and I could go on), we are no stangers to the occasional critter.

I have been spring cleaning. Basically, I am going room by room and giving it the thorough "once over"...baseboards, organizing drawers, cabinets and closets, vacuuming furniture, laundering curtains and anything else that's not nailed down. Sadly, it is giving life to me in some very weird ways...but that's another blog entry altogether.

Anyhoo, while cleaning the hardwood floor underneath my bed, I came across an old People magazine. (Incidentally, if anyone has any tips on how to keep the underbelly of a bed clean, I'd love to hear them! It is always a bevy of dust-bunnies). The magazine was open and face-down. I pulled it out and discovered 2 small-ish piles of what appeared to be sawdust.

"Hmmm," I thought to myself, "Maybe there is a screw or something coming loose in one of the slats - hence the piles..."

But deep in my heart I knew that wasn't it.

Later that night - about 10:30 pm or so, while Michael and I were getting ready for bed - I remembered the 2 piles of sawdust planted on Brittney Spears face and showed them to Michael. He got on his stomach and glanced under the bed. "I don't see anything!"

Well, of course you wouldn't see anything. It's dark under there, you're practically asleep. Good grief! I, then, go in search of the flashlight. With Michael on one side of the bed and I on the other, I shine the light towards the vicinity of the piles. Something's...well...something is there! I can clearly see 2 objects that appear to be antennae hanging down from the slat.

"Michael, don't you see that?" I inquire.

"Yeah...I see it," He replies.

WHAM!

Turns out, it was a bug. A weird, demonic bug with a voracious appetite for slats. He had eaten a tunnel into one part of the slat and had come out about 6 inches down-slat. How long had he been there? Your guess is as good as mine. But for however long, I had been sleeping over a demon bug and didn't know it.

OK..Michael then puts the bug into a ziplock bag so he can keep it and find out what kind it is. Meanwhile, I am on Google trying to find out myself. I NEED to know, right now at 11pm, whether or not this bug is some kind of mutant termite and if my walls are about to come crashing down. So, I smartly Google "brown wood eating bug insect white spots on back mutant termite from hell".

For some reason, Michael finds this funny (someone please tell him! THAT'S how you do Google!!). Meanwhile, bug is still twitching in side the bag. We named him "Google", then put him out of his misery. (I don't like bugs, but I'm not cruel to them! Well, except for the black widow spider that Michael caught and caged yesterday to show the kids. I insisted she be smashed). Michael has a friend who works in the entymology department at Oregon. We may have to fed-ex the bug to him.

Needless to say, my Google search gave me about 48,000 results. Not helpful.

You might think the story ends here...but you'd be wrong.

"Let's go to bed," my sweetheart suggests.

Oh, no - I'm not sleeping with that demon bug's habitat underneath me. What if it has laid millions of eggs inside my slat? What if they hatch tonight and we go crashing to the floor? Or worse...what if they move to other slats, or walls, or children? No, honey - that slat's coming off TONIGHT!

So, late as it was, my sweet, wonderful, sacrificial husband took the mattress off...and the box springs, got out his drill, unscrewed the slat, put a new slat in its place, and threw the demon-possessed slat out into the yard.

Then we got into bed and laughed.

I still have the bug. I still want to know what it is. But life has to go on. I still have many, many more closets to clean.

Bless ya!