The bug man cometh

The Bug Man Cometh. Yes, he must come, and soon! What are those fine wood shavings on my bathroom floor, right under the mysterious baseboard heating panels that almost no one has anymore? Hot-water pipes run through them, making a gurgling sound at night in the winter.

I like living in this old house, but it's a mammoth pink boat on Chestnut Street in the heart of the historic district of Milton. Those "circa people" have been here questioning its age, circa, circa, circa! I am barely a historical tour guide, but it's somewhere around 160 years old. An ancient mariner of a sea captain lived here then. I once saw a ghost lady in Victorian dress pass by late one night. She was so transparent, I could see right through to the bookcase in the den.

She wouldn't have had to worry about encountering fire ants then, for they first came to the South in 1918. But I have to worry about these rather large black carpenter ants, for they have traveled up the tree next to my powder room and drilled into the wall. Chewing and chomping away. What goes on in there at night? They're as busy as I am!

So I got out my trusty old paper phone book, another relic from the past, and looked up exterminators. There were quite a few to choose from, much more than skunk trappers that I needed about a year ago. The only skunk trapper who answered was from Texas! However, the first bug man I called never called me back, even though much money is made on the backs of termites, or in my case, carpenter ants. The second proved reliable and came by the next week. He sprayed around the house, outside and in, and set up a schedule to come back a few times in the future.

That's a good thing, because some stragglers have seemingly survived, left my bathroom and migrated to other parts of the house. Jeff even found one crawling on his shoulder while sitting in his favorite chair, quickly killed it, and recorded the date on one of his meticulous charts labeled, "Sightings!"

Before the bug man came, Jeff deposited those sticky cardboard cricket squares all around, and they hopped on, got permanently stuck, and eventually were lined up cheek to jowl like a packed car lot. What I call albino crickets, pale ghosts of their former selves, seem to limp across the living room floor by early September. Jeff used to slap them with his bedroom slipper. I myself have somewhat of a Buddhist resistance to killing even these intruders. I was painting late the other evening and a bug landed on my artwork. I dabbed it with my paintbrush, and it flew off with golden wings!

Later, I hoped that it wasn't a firefly, because I love those gentle creatures that light up the night. By the way, I haven't seen any flashing their green lanterns in the yard this summer. I remember the Dewey Beach of summers way past, like in the early 1960s. Crop duster-like planes flew overhead, spraying a fog of pungent insecticide, but that meant summers at the beach. That and the visit of the Culligan water softener man.

Those mosquitos then were big razorbacks that were easier to swat than the almost-invisible head-biting gnats of today that fly around my neck. Nothing is worse than the bloodsucking horseflies that smash into our front windshield as we travel down the Scenic Route 9 in Kent County.

Then there's Rusty, my cat, and his designer flea collar. He's almost as big as a smaller version of his African Saharan relatives, and dollar store collars or even those expensive drops don't work on him. No, he requires a $60 flea collar made in Germany, entombed in a tin can with several circles of tape around the lid. The best part is that it has three clamp-on fake 5-carat diamond reflectors that snap on it and make him light up like Tiffany's window display at night when he's on one of his nocturnal adventures. He seems really proud of it, for everyone who shines car headlights on him at 3 a.m. will know that, "He is a Cat of Property!"

Finally, I just purchased a pair of so-called bug-killing rackets. They were Jeff's belated Father's Day gift so he hopefully won't have to wear out his bedroom slippers anymore. So far I haven't heard any big electrocution buzzes from waving them around, and I don't play pickleball, as you might have guessed. When turned on, they emit a science fiction-like blue light. I know they work because I zapped a carpenter ant on Jeff's chair today and saw a small flash of blue light as it met its demise.

And as you will see in the accompanying photo, I also used it on a giant fly, complete with its own rhinestone collar. Wow! You wouldn't believe the sting of that thing!