Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me

Life is…

Photo by Lon Casler Bixby

Shoo fly, don’t bother me.

I’m very tolerant of sharing my home with creepy-crawlies, arachnids, and insects — to a point. Most leave me alone and I leave them alone in an unspoken truce of “don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you.”

With Daddy Longlegs and House Spiders, I never mess with them. I just let them do their job of eating and keeping the population of other insects to a minimum in my house. Occasionally there might be some other types of spiders that I’m not familiar with or that don’t know their place, so I’ll gently capture them in a glass and release them outside. Besides, just like with crickets, it’s bad luck to kill them.

The occasional silverfish that makes an appearance doesn’t really bother me either. Even ants. They’re just looking for nourishment and if they scout my kitchen, I’ll just reroute and encourage them elsewhere with some white vinegar and baking soda.

I do have to be honest though; earwigs creep me out and it takes a lot of willpower not to smack them into oblivion when I spot them, but I don’t because I seldom ever see them, and also, they’re like little environmental janitors — feasting on dead and decaying insects. Basically, they’re helpful little buggers that’re keeping your residence clean of insect carcasses.

But where I draw the line with “live and let live” is cockroaches, mosquitoes, and flies. Yes, I know they serve an ecological purpose, but… I cannot stand them and when I see them, I go medieval on their butts. Especially because they have no respect for “don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you.”

Cockroaches. Iew. Enough said. See ’em, kill ‘em.

Mosquitoes. If you don’t get them first, they will literally suck your blood and probably give you some type of God-awful disease. See ’em, kill ‘em.

Flies. They will deliberately dive-bomb you at every chance they get, with no other purpose what-so-ever except to annoy you. And annoy me they do. The have the whole world to fly around, yet, they have to buzz their little flappy wings right in my face. Arg. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing; fixing or eating dinner; watching TV; reading a book, they don’t care about personal space at all. As a matter of fact, they…