P&T Lockout Lifestylez: Indoor Bugs

i like to kill them bitches.

one time me and my friend were eating ice cream on a bench outside and enjoying the beautiful summer day. then we saw a guy across the street in a fancy black sedan. his windows were rolled down and he was playing goofy teenagery music. we made fun of him, without him noticing.

then we saw the most peculiar thing! there was (i shit you not) a huge praying mantis on the outer edge of the passenger side window! we quickly summoned the dorky guy’s attention, and told him what was happening. he refused to be able to understand us. and just looked at us really confusedly. we didn’t give up tho, and continued to say, “there is a praying mantis on your car. about to crawl into your window.” after the 5th or 6th time explaining it in various ways, the guy drove away and rolled up the window at the same time. this pushed the mantis up and over the ledge, into the car.

the end.

I see this one that had an abdomen the size of an almond M&M just hanging off its thread from my roof. I baseball batted that bitch tho.

ANd when I was covering my pool, underneath the cinder blocks were two red centipedes that made me shit. They weren’t big or anything and I think I just had to shit.

Ever since I learned from the TV show QI that the word “bug” should, strictly speaking, only be applied to those insects which have sucking mouth parts (the relevant bit is under the heading “Bugs?” about one-third of the way down that page), I have been lost for words as to how I should identify those insects which I encounter, or at least wish to discuss. As I have just demonstrated, the term “insect” would generally be quite adequate, however that’s occasionally a little stuffy-sounding, and as you can all probably notice, I prefer a more casual liguistic presentation.

Since this revelation, I have generally taken to still calling those little fellows “bugs”, but have internally acknowledged that this is not actually correct. This has led to copious bouts of self-flagellation in my private time to purge myself of the guilt and shame. Even more so than usual.

But on to the topics du jour (noting of course that the word “bug” may not be used correctly in the following text):

• Bugs outdoors are cool. I don’t bother them none, even if they bother me.
• If I find an innocuous bug indoors, I shall leave it be.
• If I find a mildly objectionable bug indoors (“mildly objectionable” being say a spider or centipede, where the objection is mostly safety-related rather than eeew related), I will generally catch it and put it outside, using the glass-and-paper technique as described by Seth.
• If I find an entirely objectionable bug indoors, it’s gots to go. Cockroaches will generally be caught in a piece of paper towel, then crushed by hand, then crushed by foot, then buried under garbage; if I think they may elude me, I’ll hit them up with spray first. Mosquitoes get caught by hand, even if it takes me an hour of dogged pursuit (sans teeth). Silverfish get stepped on or caught in and crushed within tissue, depending on the situation (never thought of flushing the tissue; thanks for the tip Rorschach). Flies tend to get whacked by whatever happens to be close to hand (if only you knew where I kept my hands when I’m alone), though frequently without success (on the other hand: if no furniture gets broken through my efforts, I consider it a tie).
• Indoor bug stories. Hmm…anyone else notice that women scream whenever they see a bug, no matter how small or harmless they may be? Or maybe it’s just that women tend to scream when I’m around. Either way, that scream will generally see me getting ready to flee.
• I’ve a friend who will happily eat a moth on a dare. I can’t say I’d ever eat anything insectoid. I don’t even eat shellfish, considering them to be overgrown insects of the sea (must be why I wasn’t invited to Amar’e’s birthday party).

And now I’m off to beat myself silly. Carry on without me.

This is just a great idea, Mr. Seth.

I’ve always fancied myself someone who wasn’t afraid of bugs — just like any man worth his salt. When mom / girlfriend / wife murder shrieks from the next room over I enter to find a cricket or some shit, I do the gentlemanly thing: Pick it up with a napkin, and set it free outside. Confident. Testicles.

Then, a few weeks ago, I’m in my car, driving home on the freeway, when out of the corner of my eye I spot one of the largest goddam spiders I’ve ever seen in person. Instinctively, I batted at the fucker, but it just ended up falling on the floor right in front of me. At first I couldn’t see it, and for a while I debated on whether or not to pull over, throw on the hazards, and flush the bastard out.

“No,” I said to myself. “It’s harmless. Keep driving, like a real man.”

So I kept driving. About ten minutes later, the fucker reappeared at 10 o’clock on my steering wheel, inches from my hand. At this point, I did one of those weird convulsive shiver-flails that a 10 year old girl does when her older brother holds up a garter snake anywhere within five feet of her. Without even thinking, I grabbed the nearest semi-hard object — a pack of chewing gum — and ground the poor thing into spider jelly.

After finding a napkin in the glove compartment and cleaning the remains, I drove to the nearest hospital to have both my testicles removed.

I am usually pretty ambivalent about killing indoor bugs, in part because of the significant moral implications and in part because squishing bugs is yucky. The exception is those hundred leg motherfuckers. If I see one of those I won’t be able to relax until it’s dead.

And yea, crickets evoke wholly irrational fear. Glue traps, those things are a revelation.

Or punch them, depends on how I feel. As far as other bugs are concerned, they will be dealt with! I don’t know why, but I always feel bad about killing spiders. I always say sorry to the little dead spider body as I examine it before dumping it in the trash. Same thing with lady-bugs. I’m not sure if this pathos extends to other pests though.

regular sized roaches: Kill with extreme prejudice.

Ants: Kill any straggler scouts. If they return alive to their group, they will return en masse. Got to kill the scouts.

Flies: Bat out of the air with a fly swatter

Spiders: leave them alone, unless their really big and/or my wife is freaking out, then catch and release or, if freaking is especially intense, kill.

Big Mongo Waterbug type of things: These are quite common in Texas and they’re even bigger than the ones in NY. My reaction to these things has always been a gutteral scream of terror, but I’ve learned to control it. Funny, seth, I use your exact technique, clear tupperware, piece of card stock, and swift backyard removal… I swear those things make a thud when they hit the ground… shudder….

The war started when we moved in back in July. And It was really bad…

Bad like, I had to turn on the lamp before I swung my legs out of bed in the morning because if I didn’t, chances are that I would put my bare foot down on a big crunchy roach.

Before you start thinking we’re slobs who don’t know how to store food properly, let me explain.

Our block is really shitty. Lots and lots of trash everywhere. People will saunter by eating or drinking while I’m standing in my front doorway, give me a nod like “wassup” and then toss their half-finished drink container or half-finshed bag of chicken wings on the ground in front of my house. Then they just glare at me and saunter off.

There’s so much trash on the street, on the sidewalks, in the bushes, clogging the storm drains, and left on people’s cars. So you really can’t get rid of the roaches because they pretty much own the whole street.

At first we took pretty standard approaches. We didn’t leave ANYTHING out at all. No food, no dishes, no drinks. Even glasses of water were washed immediately. If we dropped a crumb, we scrubbed the floor where it landed immediately. We bought household sprays and roach traps.
And they worked… for a few hours

We’d spray the house and put down the traps before going to bed. Then in the morning, there’d be like 15 fat dead roaches to scrape off the floor.

We’d say, “Yes! We’ve finally got ’em” and head off to work. Then while we were at work, a new family of roaches would move in.

This went on for like two months. Finally, we decided to get a little bat-shit crazy with the roaches. We talked to a friend who works at a hardware store, and he got us some industrial stuff that you can’t get over the counter. We drenched our property and house with it, and then my wife bleached every inch of the house 3 straight times. Yep, our house had a lot of fumes in it.

We caught a big break when the family next door moved out. It was one of those welfare moms with 8 kids by different fathers, and those kids would generate an unbelievable amount of trash. There was an immediate decrease in empty quarter water containers and half-eaten bags of cheetos left on the sidewalk.

We’re still stuck between a hot wings stand and another shitty bodega, and they’re not going anywhere. But we’ve only seen 1 roach in the last two weeks.

LONG LIVE SPECIES WITH OPPOSABLE THUMBS

Sorry this turned into a rant about the squalor on my block. Thanks for listening. I was getting really pent up inside.

growing up in upstate NY country I’ve shared my quarters with many ants, wasps, ladybugs, and crickets as well but they never got too out of hand. Mice is another story, but they are not insects so I digress. Now in Queens and haven’t seen many in my apartment because my landlord has a guy come once a month to spray the perimeter. Just a few rouge “waterbugs” aka American cockroaches (the big brown ones) that come up from the sewers or damp basements every six months or so. They’re nasty.

Speaking of those big roaches, heres a tip I learned from living in the SoCal desert for a few years. If you have multiple sinks in your house (many of us do), especially ones that don’t get too much use, make sure you run the water in them periodically. The reason is to keep the J-trap full of water. What is the J-trap you ask? Its that weird curve your pipe makes under the sink that you’ve always wondered why it does. “Stuff gets stuck in there, its annoying” you always say. Well it turns out that that curve allows a pool of water to stay there which keeps odors from the wastewater system as well as roaches and the like from crawling into your sink. I had two spare sinks in my condo in Cali that never got used, and I kept wondering why I kept seeing these 2 inch long roaches around my immaculately clean apartment. Nobody is immune….run your water! That concludes today’s plumbing lesson.

That was somehow accidentally introduced to the US from Asia not too many years ago, like the late 90’s I think. Anyway, in the fall they try to take shelter in people’s houses for the winter. If you’ve got any holes in your siding there’s a good chance you find at least a few in your home, sometimes even in the dead of winter, which is kind of creepy. They mostly stay hidden, but occasionally you’ll find one crawling on a wall or ceiling. Thankfully we recently got brand new siding at my house and I haven’t seen any for awhile, but any time I did I usually flushed it down the toilet, because crushing them released their scent and I think that might attract others. Worst Bug Ever.