Category: Bugs
This is what happens when the lights go out. The rats mobilize and the cockroaches arm themselves. It’s an all-out war unseen by human eyes. We wouldn’t want to see it either; it would be too horrible to comprehend.
Neither side knows exactly how it started. Legend has it: the two sides existed peacefully for millennia, when suddenly the warlike rat chieftain Lord Whiskillas began demanding tributes from the nearby cockroach village of Under the Fridge.
The Under the Fridgian cockroaches refused, and Whiskillas sent an army to decimate the innocent village. At least, that’s how the cockroaches tell it.
The truth is probably closer to a struggle over territory. Under the Fridge is a land rich with food and resources. There’s always an errant marshmallow or scattering of bread crumbs there. Whoever controls Under the Fridge controls the entire planet Kitchen.
Lord Whiskillas’ grandson Whiskillas the Third is now the rat chieftain. And unfortunately for the cockroaches, he’s every bit as warlike and blood-hungry as his grandfather.
However, the rats never counted on the enormous numbers of the cockroaches. Small as they may be, they have the advantage of speed and hard shiny shells that go crunch when you step on them. Ew.
The cockroach leader is King Uncrunchable, because he’s survived multiple attempts on his life. Some say he has feline blood, because he has more lives than a cat.
King Uncrunchable is an unscrupulous leader who favors guerilla warfare over conventional means. He’d just as easily throw dust mites into your face as he would sacrifice one of his 100 brothers if he knew it would get him ahead.
In the rat camp, there are whispers of a rumor that it was King Uncrunchable’s lineage that triggered the war. Somehow, this old king, whose name has been forgotten in the many generations of cockroaches, staged the sack of Under the Fridge.
Why? Because he believed that the growing number of cockroaches would mean an enormous army that even the rats wouldn’t be able to defeat. And he wanted the entire Kitchen for his race.
Whatever the reason, there are those that oppose the war on both sides. Leader of this opposition is Prince Ratmo, the son of Whiskillas the Third. He describes himself as a lover, not a fighter. And he doesn’t understand why they all just can’t get along.
There’s another reason why he’s opposed to this war. It’s love. Forbidden love.
For Prince Ratmo, son of Lord Whiskillas the Third, chieftain of the rats, is in love with Princess Julroach, daughter of King Uncrunchable, leader of the cockroaches.
They met one dark night in the plains of the Kitchen floor. Out in the open. Prince Ratmo was leading a squad to explore the Kitchen floor when he encountered fair Princess Julroach and 50 of her sisters.
The girls were frolicking in a sticky and delicious puddle of orange juice. They were caught totally unaware.
Before Ratmo could even give the order, his men attacked. They slaughtered her 50 sisters when Ratmo interceded. It was love at first sight. Ratmo’s beady little eyes looked lovingly into Julroach’s shiny compound eyeballs. And a strange feeling overtook Ratmo.
Just as Ratmo’s squad began to tear off Julroach’s limbs, he jumped into the fray and clawed them all to death. It was over before he realized what he had done. He had killed his own men.
But that didn’t matter. He held Julroach in his tiny little paws and cradled her broken wings. She looked back up at him and smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered. “My hero.”
Ratmo took her back to his hole and fabricated a story about a marauding army of cockroaches. His father was absolutely livid and ordered a mass-scale attack on the cockroach village of In the Sink.
The rats slaughtered the village while Ratmo remained behind to nurse Princess Julroach back to health. When she was finally able to crawl on all sixes again, he embraced her and said, “I’m never going to let anything happen to you ever again.”
Then she kissed him. And beyond what any encyclopedia could ever explain, they had funky rat/cockroach sex.
Back at the cockroach camp, King Uncrunchable was equally outraged. The rats had just decimated one of his villages and killed 51 of his daughters, including his favorite, Princess Julroach. He had had enough. It was time to end this now and forever.
The entire cockroach army gathered at the edge of the Kitchen floor. They armed themselves to the antennae. Toothpick spears, dust mite bombs, the works.
A rat scouting party caught a glimmer from the Kitchen floor as an errant cockroach walked through a beam of moonlight. Something was up. His whiskers could feel it. So he alerted Lord Whiskillas the Third.
Lord Whiskillas climbed up to the top of the fridge and his tiny rat heart skipped a beat. For below him was what appeared to be the entire cockroach army marching across the Kitchen floor. Their numbers were triple the size of the rat army. And they were coming, fast.
He sounded the alarm. Rats everywhere mobilized and scurried out to the Kitchen floor. They were bigger than the cockroaches. Lord Whiskillas hoped their size would give them the advantage.
“These cockroaches want a fight?” he shouted to his rat army. “We’ll give them a fight! Rat ho!”
The two armies raced towards each other in desperate bloodlust. The death toll was going to be high tonight, and both sides knew it. This was all or nothing. And just as they were about to engage…
…the kitchen light turned on.
“Holy shit!”
Mr. Henderson looked down at the floor. Cockroaches and rats were everywhere. He grabbed a broom and started whacking them. They scampered back to their crevices and holes.
“Holy shit! Martha! Get down here! Get me that can of Raid!”
And thus, the great Rat-Cockroach War was postphoned. For now. For now…
. . .
What do you think rats and cockroaches do when the lights go off?
Someone once told me that a person unknowingly eats about two spiders a year. This usually happens while the person is asleep. Apparently spiders like wet, moist environments. And what’s more wet & moist than a person’s mouth? (Okay, get your mind out of the gutter, kids.)
I’ve eaten my fair share of other bugs too. Gnats, flies, and maybe even a cockroach or two (and so have you if you’ve ever eaten in any public restaurant). But if I can help it, I try to minimize my yearly bug intake.
I hate bugs. Never liked them, never will. Those creepy crawly legs and crunchy shells are what I hate the most.
I like to say that I’ve been traumatized by childhood experiences and that’s why I relish squashing them now, until they’re a juicy little spot on the wall. Before you edge your chair away, let me explain these murderous rages of mine.
It all started when I was wee high to my Daddy’s knee. I wasn’t but a little boy—impressionable, eager, and full of wonder. And it was with great wonder that I poked at that bee’s nest.
Now what little boy has never done that, huh? Answer me that. None, right? Thought so.
So poke away at the bee’s nest I did. I even followed the poking with a few stones. What followed that is utterly and painfully predictable: little boy runs from angry bees, angry bees sting little boy, little boy vows a lifetime of revenge.
Some may argue that this sting was justified, that the bees were only guarding their nest, and that this little boy learned a lesson. It is important for me to provide a motive for this. Up above my childhood bedroom lived a hive of carpenter bees.
Carpenter bees are as large as bumblebees, which, to the eyes of a young and impressionable little boy, are about as large as a Buick Regal. Those horrid monstrosities would often burrow a hole into my room and buzz around as I shuddered under my blanket.
I can still hear that awful buzzing right now. Buzz buzz buzz. Awful!
Traumatizing as that was, that was nothing compared to the louder, more fearsome buzzing of the cicadas. These terrifying beasts harbored a forceful air-speed velocity that, when slammed in the chest, was quite noticeable. And slammed in the chest I was, many a time.
Perhaps the most harrowing experience came when I, still a little wide-eyed boy, was wading in the pool in our backyard. Our peach tree stood right near the pool and provided endless scrumptious delights all summer long. (If you’ve never tasted a fresh peach in your life, you’ve never truly lived.)
The peach tree was also a favorite resting and molting spot for cicadas. Although cicadas are mostly harmless (no stingers or claws or fangs), their mere presence was enough to send shivers through my skin.
They buzzed about like WWII bombers. Bigger and louder than carpenter bees, they were the granddaddy of scary bugs.
You can imagine, then, the potential for catastrophe by having a potent molting ground (the peach tree) next to a popular summer pastime (the pool).
One fine sunny day, I dove into the pool with carefree abandon. The cool water washed away the burning sun. All seemed right in the world. Until I resurfaced and reached behind me to scratch an itch I had on my back.
And what did my fingers encounter? A hard, crispy cicada perched on my back with its legs dug deep into my skin. It charged its wings and buzzed wildly when I touched it. For a few agonizing seconds, I envisioned a monstrous cicada with blood-red eyes swinging its scorpion-like tail to deliver a fatal blow of poison right into my spine.
Of course, none of that really happened. Instead, it flew away, probably more freaked out than I was. But still, you know how impressionable little boys are.
Those were the two most perceptible events. There were others, many others, involving cockroaches, beetles, and wasps, but I think I’ve relived enough traumatic experiences for one day.
So you see, my childhood was plagued by killer bugs. Killer bugs with creepy crawly legs and crunch shells. They’ve been waiting all my life for the right moment to dismember me. I know it, I just know it. And that is why I must squash their crunchy bodies with my shoes.
Well, okay, so maybe they can’t dismember me. Maybe they have more to fear of me than I do of them.
But still. I hate bugs.
. . .
Do you like bugs?
Chinese parents have stomachs of iron. Literally; their stomach lining is cold hard metal. Rivets line their intestines. There is very little they cannot digest; I kid you not. Want me to prove it?
Well, pull up a chair and let me tell you a story. ‘Tis a true story, a story from my youth.
I was in grade school, only eight or nine years old. My family and I were in some nondescript Chinese restaurant near our house. It was the kind of place that uses fluorescent lights and has greasy tables. You can smell the grease and oil down the street.
We were given a booth with plastic seats and plastic chopsticks. And this was a good seat. Whenever Chinese waiters see a Chinese family in a mostly-white town, they always give them extra-special treatment. If you’re not Asian and you’re hearing this, sorry, but it’s true. Sucks for you.
My brother and I sat across from each other. My Mom was next to me, my Dad across from her. Menus with slippery plastic covers were placed on the table. I picked up a menu and opened it.
A cockroach fell out of my menu and into my lap.
Let me repeat that.
A friggin’ cockroach fell out of my friggin’ menu and into my friggin’ lap.
Now I hate bugs. Absolutely hate them. When I was a kid, they terrified me. So I flipped out and batted the cockroach off my legs with noisy fervor. The other patrons looked over and probably thought I had a wild ferret in my pants or something.
My Mom, on the other hand, calmly looked over and said:
“Don’t worry, all Chinese restaurants have cockroaches. Do you want sweet and sour chicken or sesame chicken tonight?”
We stayed and had dinner there. Stomachs of iron, I tell you, stomachs of iron.
. . .
Do your parents have stomachs of iron?
I think I just created a super-breed of ants.
Last winter, a colony of ants appeared in my bathroom. They popped up overnight without warning. I just walked in there one day, and everywhere around me is a deluge of tiny black specks walking around.
(For your information, I keep my bathroom pretty darn clean, so no dirty bathroom jokes please.)
I once found Lysol Disinfectant Antibacterial Kitchen Cleaner to be oddly effective in killing bugs. So I grabbed my bottle and squirted the hell out of the ants.
Their tiny little bodies writhed in agony as they screamed, “Oh, the humanity! Oh, the humanity!” (Or would it be, “Oh, the antity! Oh, the antity!”?)
They all stopped in their tracks and died in a sheath of disinfectant. I was victorious!
I wiped them all up and was pleased that I was getting double-duty out of this (not only did I kill the ants, but my bathroom just got disinfected again too).
And that was the last I saw of them.
Until now.
Seems they’re back. Not in the numbers as before. They’re sending out a few reluctant scouts this time, meandering here and there, looking for whatever it is they look for.
So I grabbed my handy disinfectant and sprayed them again.
And the little ants giggled and danced in the disinfectant rain. “Hee hee hee! That was fun! Spray me again!” the tiny bastards shouted.
Oh no. A super-breed of ants. Natural selection at work.
I went to the local shopping center to look for some ant poison. But as I read the labels, I thought, “Do I really want to create an even stronger breed of ants? My ants are disinfectant-immune. But next year, they could be poison-immune too. Oh, the humanity!”
Defeated, I returned to the bathroom and slumped onto the toilet bowl to ponder my situation. The toilet bowl is amazing for ponderances. You should all try it. It’s great.
As I pondered, I noticed a tiny spider in the corner of my bathroom. It must have just moved in. Below it on the floor was a tiny, shriveled up dead ant body.
I grinned. Then, as I felt myself revert back to ten years old, I grabbed another wandering ant and threw him into the spider’s web. I sat there, fascinated, as the spider wound the itty bitty ant body up and sucked out his juices.
It was a terrific show. I used to kill all of the spiders in my place, but now I give them a little more leeway. And now, I feed these pet spiders of mine whenever I can.
But you know what? This didn’t really solve my ant problem. It cut down on the population of scouting ants, and more and more tiny, shriveled up dead ant bodies appeared on the floor. But there still were ants.
And with my luck, these ants were going to mutate into a spider-eating super-breed.
So I looked elsewhere for solutions. And one Sunday afternoon, an infomercial came on about household tips and tricks, like how to use pantyhose to store onions and other techniques you’d never dream of, even with heroin.
One of the tips was using chalk to stop ants. Supposedly ants can’t walk over chalk. The talcum powder interferes with their antennae or something scientific like that.
So armed with chalk, I covered all of the little ant holes and cracks I could find in my bathroom.
And by golly, it’s been working! Woo hoo! With the combination of spiders and chalk, I haven’t had to deal with stray ants all week!
So I’ve finally been able to foil my super-breed of ants! (That is, until they mutate wings and start flying above the chalk to eat the spiders, which should happen around the spring of next year…)
. . .
Does your apartment have an ant problem?
