Theresa Lewis

I had always feared living alone. I don’t know why. Maybe, it was because I grew up in a home with nine siblings and my parents. Our home was constantly abuzz with daily activity. Life was so much fun. Never did a day go by without some sort of hub-bub or mini crisis.

 

Now that I lived alone in my apartment, I was astonished to find that I was pretty good company for myself. Only once, shortly after I moved into my apartment did I ever ask myself… what now?

 

Somehow, every day took care of itself. There always seemed to be something to do. I realized that I really liked being able to come and go as I pleased without being accountable to anyone for my whereabouts. My new-found independence felt really good, to tell you the truth.

 

The one problem that I had living in this basement apartment is that some of God’s creatures felt sorry for me and had assumed that I must be lonely living by myself. They came to visit me on a daily basis.

 

First, there were the huge black beetles… you know, the kind that can bite a toe off, if they so chose. Man, can they ever run fast. As soon as I saw one, it would dart out of sight sending me on a hunting expedition until it was caught. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had to move all the furniture around to hunt the little critters down. It wasn’t easy. I have only three hundred and seventy-three square feet of space that is jammed packed with stuff. Yet, daily, I would move things around in a frenzied search for some uninvited guest.

 

I soon discovered that leaving a window open to get some fresh air was seen as a welcome mat by earwigs. They came inside in droves. If you have ever been bitten by an earwig, you know that the bite feels like a burn from a red hot poker. It’s nasty and it leaves a person totally paranoid.

 

Once earwigs get into a house, they hide in sneaky and unusual places, such as under the toilet seat, or inside the roll of toilet paper just waiting to be spun out after an early morning pee when I was still half asleep. Every day when I got up from sleep, I would have to check the washroom before doing my thing. Sometimes, if the inspection took too long, I would be in agony by the time I got to perch on the throne.

 

Earwigs hid in my dishrag, on the inside of a door or drawer handle and even inside my coffee maker. I can’t tell you how many times I sipped a hot cup of morning brew past the boiled pincers of an earwig carcass. Yuck! They make my flesh crawl.

 

One day, it struck me that they are called earwigs for a reason. I’ll just just bet it’s because they have been known to crawl into people’s ears as they slept. I remember watching an Alfred Hitchcock episode when I was a kid where an earwig crawled into a man’s ear at night and it chewed a hole into his brain and drove him screaming insane. It got to a point that I couldn’t go to sleep without doing an earwig hunt to get them all before they got me while I lay sleeping. No matter if I was sure that I had them all rounded up and exterminated, I still would cover my ears every night … just in case.

 

Yes, I know, they could still crawl up into my nostrils or into my gaping mouth as I sleep, but I do have to breathe.

 

While I was on earwig patrol, the spiders came… they came by the thousands. They were huge black beasts with hairy legs that were so long and thick that I could see their muscles flex as they ran across the floors and walls.     

 

One day I spotted a huge black spider on the parlor floor. As I approached it, I half expected it to run away as usual, but that one didn’t move. I stepped on it. I think I know now why it didn’t run away. It was probably because it was exhausted from giving birth to a zillion babies that were dangling from the rim of my lampshade by hair like webs that sparkled from the warm glow of the light bulb. I fetched the can of insecticide and soaked the nest of newborns and wiped them off with a tissue.   

 

Mercy me, within two days, they were all back again… hundreds of them… all hanging like delicate crystals from the rim of my lampshade. Believe it or not, it took more than seven weeks to get rid of the last of them. I wouldn’t swear to it, but one of the big adult spiders lifted a leg as I started to approach it. It seemed to me that it flipped me off.

 

It wasn’t too long before those ugly rubber back bugs that you find under rocks came a calling. Following right on the heels of the rubber backed bugs, were the centipedes and millipedes. The centipedes were a good three inches long. There weren’t too many centipedes, just enough to freak me out. I thought spiders and beetles were fast, but they have nothing on the centipedes. The millipedes stayed in the outer porch for the most part, but the odd one would come in from time to time. It got to a point where I carried my insecticide and flyswatter with me as I went from room to room.

 

Finally, I got the landlord to spray his lawn with a mild solution of soapy water and that seemed to curtail the beasties for a while. At last, I was able to rest a little easier for a week or so.

 

(part two “MORE GUESTS” is coming soon)

 

 

THE END