Bugs - I Hate Bugs

I have never liked bugs. Yellow and black spiders that build webs in corn fields, green worms as big around as a finger that infest tomato plants, any kind of ants or spiders or flies except maybe dragonflies, which were purportedly able to sew up a person’s lips, but they never got mine. My mother told me that August is spider month, and I have learned that it really is. Webs spring up in hours, sometimes minutes, and sometimes there isn’t even a web to give warning. I was chatting on the phone with my daughter one night when a spider, possibly the brown recluse spider whose bite is allegedly venomous enough to cause instant death (but maybe not), ran down the back of the couch and straight at me. The cat was no help. Bless whoever invented cordless phones, allowing me to run into the other room to get spouse to save me (and the cat) while describing in detail my terrifying experience to my daughter, who hates spiders even more than I. Spouse dispatched the spider and saved us all from a fate worse than - spiders. Normally I will deal with my own spiders, but not when the abdomen is the size of a dime. I still get the shivers thinking about that spider.


Fast forward to this month, still Spider Month, but we have a new insect to think about now. We have a cat, who is in permanent Time Out in the house until – you know. Imagine our surprise when after a recent long weekend away without the cat, we came home to find that she had become infested with fleas. I won’t even mention that she had scratched herself silly and was covered with scabs, too, because that is just too gross. We got her the magic neck drips, and that has helped. Helped with the cat, that is, but not with all the fleas that started hopping around the house. We tried a flea fogger in the upstairs hall, thinking it would cover the carpets and bedrooms and we’d be flea-free. Ha! I was walking around the house, dragging my feet in the hopes of seeing nothing on them. I was picking up fleas faster than a (insert your own off-color remark here), and they were all laughing at me. I dispose of the freeloaders the humane way – in the toilet. Let me say here that the water bill is going to be a bit high this year. What were we thinking? One can of flea fogger for the whole house? When I got tired of picking the fleas off, I got the lint roller, which works really well and you can actually roll as fast as a flea can jump. Sometimes. I have now taken to wearing white socks, which makes the humidity of August feel even more fantastic, but the fleas are easier to spot. The cat is hardly scratching now, so her neck drip is working, which it should, since she got two doses in two days. Spouse asked if we could use it on ourselves, and it required all my willpower to say no, it could make us really, really sick. That I briefly considered doing it is evidence of what long exposure to bugs will do to a person’s mind.

We developed a plan, and it is this. We will flea fog (bomb) every room in the house this weekend, after packing up the cat in her carrier and putting her safely outside. We are a little concerned about bombing upstairs, downstairs, and down cellar while holding our breath. We have to set off the bombs one at a time, and they hiss so loudly you can hear them outside. But first we have to cover the smoke detectors with plastic hairnets so they don’t lose their minds and alarm themselves right off the ceilings. It requires cunning, planning, agility, and speed, and could one day become an Olympic event. We then take the cat out for a two hour ride. Imagine the joy for everyone involved. Then we come back, open all the windows, and hope that only the fleas will be eradicated.

I will let you know how it goes. I hope.

Celebrity Citings

Spouse and I have a very short list of Celebrities We Have Seen In Person. In 1976 while waiting for eight hours in the Orlando airport for our honeymoon flight home, we saw a character actor who always played bad guys in Westerns. We didn’t know his name then, and we still don’t. In 1983 at the newly opened EPCOT, we saw Lloyd Bridges, who had done a narration for the American Adventure. His outfit had upgraded from his “Sea Hunt” days, but we knew who it was. In 1986 we saw Marvin Haggler dining at Quintals’ on Cape Cod. Spouse’s brother requested and received an autograph. I waited in line for an hour once to get an autograph from Tony Stewart. In 2010 while at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, we saw that guy who is on all the Disney animation documentaries, and we don’t know his name, but he is the one who always wears the big earrings. If you’ve seen a special, you know who he is. He was carrying luggage, apparently ready to settle in for a spell. All very exciting, but they are all just people like you and me.


Imagine our delight when we recently came across the real life model for another silver screen character – Roz from “Monsters, Inc.” There she was, working as a cashier at a Burger King on the New Jersey Turnpike. Spouse and I stood waiting at the counter, still unaware of the surprise in store for us. What we saw was a woman with her priorities straight; she was arranging Burger King crowns, which is way more fun than waiting on customers. Once she had finished the crowns to her satisfaction, which took about 30 seconds, she turned on us to take our order. The total came to six dollars and change, and spouse reached a twenty dollar bill toward her. “You got anything smaller?” she growled. She had to be Roz’s voice coach or maybe her twin sister. Spouse and I were too surprised to react. Sure, we could have found something smaller, maybe even exact change, but the Rozette didn’t give us a chance. She made the change while berating us because she was running out of tens. We got our change and receipt, then quickly moved down the counter away from her. She is a Burger King treasure and her name is Margie. Stop in and see her some time.

It will be hard to top Margie/Roz in the Celebrity spotting game, but we will keep looking. We may still be lucky enough to find the elusive Large Marge from “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.”