Saturday, January 25, 2003

The Bugs

I've got a remake of Hitchcock's famous movie, "The Birds", right here in my apartment. Apparently, my building is the latest to be infested with this black insect - it's about the size of a wasp, black, I think has three thoraic segments, and is generally big and annoying enough to require a flight plan every time it emerges from God only knows where. So anyway, I had the exterminators come last week to rid me of these bugs. I'm convinced they are blind because every now and then, they dive bomb me. I hear them coming - zzzzzzz! - and then pow!, right into my cheek.

I stalk the bugs when I see them with a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Now, these are hardy little buggers and usually take about 80 million whacks before they surrender to oblivion. They could be missing limbs and wings and other buggy parts and yet, they can still fly! They can still zzzzzzzzzz! My apartment manager said that the bugs have short lives and they are attracted to the light. I didn't ask, but I was thinking that maybe from now on I should sit in the dark?

Anyway, things came to a head last night. Whatever the exterminator did last week didn't work. I still have the bugs. We're not talking mass infestation, just one or two of them flying around, but it's enough to drive an already batty girl absolutely buggy. So anyway, I killed one last night during the eggplant cooking (see below entry) and then felt good. And then I saw another one on the blinds. So my thought was that the blind was a good thing and I'd leave it alone to commit suicide against the window like they usually do (I have a buggy morgue by the sliding glass door that I have to clean up every other week or so).

But was my good-hearted generosity rewarded? No. The bug refused -absolutely refused! - to die peacefully by the sliding glass door. Instead, in the middle of the night, while I was reading (Virgin Atlantic Airways case study), it dive bombed my cheek. So then of course I had to get up and look for the bug. Could not find the bug. So I figured it had flown off and perhaps had discovered something else to go crash against. At any rate, one truth I held dear: the bug would be dead by morning.

And that's when I moved slightly. And heard that zzzzz sound. The bug was near my ear. Actually entangled in my hair. For those of you haven't seen me recently (or not at all, for that matter), I have a lot of hair. Lots and lots of thick black hair. I could only hear the zzzzzs. I had no idea where the bug was. So I started jumping up and down and shaking my head. Still no bug. In a panic, I ran into the bathroom to comb my hair out. Still no bug (but no tangles either!). Then I shook out my pajama top and then the tanktop I was wearing below it. And then shoook my legs. Still no bug.

I went back into the bedroom and ah ha! Bug located. Crawling, I might add, happily on the carpet. I went after my Wall Street Journal and smacked it good. Once, twice, three, four times... and the thing would not die. Finally, I got a paper towel and crunched it (I *hate*) doing that and tossed it into the wastebasket. Finally I could sleep. But then I got all angsty. What if I was going to get attacked by insects? What if this was only the beginning and I was doomed to have black bugs crawling all over my walls? Now I see black spots all over the place, even though I've only killed one of the bugs today. I keep thinking that there are more and they're all just waiting to attack en masse.

If you don't hear from me, you know why.

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