Bug off!

For the most part bugs have surprisingly been a non-issue here.  Or, they’ve started off as not an issue and slowly crawled out from under the rocks they have been hiding under.  I’m sure the slowly creeping paranoia I’m developing lately hasn’t help, but I must admit we have fared quite well.

Mosquitoes:

The greatly feared bug had us rush out for malaria pills and bucket loads of DEET.  Hub said that his mother’s old house was just swarming with mosquitoes and sleeping without a mosquito net was suicide.  Ajima’s current apartment has screening on all the windows (this is really expensive for a large house so the house mentioned above never had the netting) and the hotel rooms we stayed at have A/C so we were never really in contact with any mosquitoes.  So of course we got lazy. 

Even though it’s “children’s spray without DEET” it still seems wrong to spray your two year old with bug spray every day and night if you never see a mosquito.  Our downfall was the night we experimented with opening the windows.  We were having hot/cold issues with the A/C and the cycling power outages and decided it might be better to go with the consistency of open windows.    

 We weren’t completely suicidal, there is a grate on the windows; the problem was with the little trap doors that allow you to open the glass windows are slightly off in sizing and allowed a hungry mosquito or two to slip into the room.

Poor little Poohpers looks like she has the chicken pox now with a spotted face and spotted legs.  It was bad, but not terrible at first, but I think since that first night her body has been sending off olfactory signals that say “come eat me, I’m yummy exotic half white meat”.

Cockroaches:

I am one of these sheltered white girls that saw her first cockroach at age thirty while working in a woodworking shop.  Even then, it seemed creepy.  Hubs recently informed me that India is the cockroach capital of the world.  He told me this because during the second night of our stay at a particular hotel, I had tripped over half of a cockroach ½” long on the floor of our hotel room.  I will admit the night before I chose to pretend that I didn’t see the ¼” long (whole) bugs scurry away in an effort to not ruin the hotel stay, but this half roach conveyed two things to me;

1. That this roach was, at one point, 1” long
2. That something big enough to rip this roach in half was lurking in our room
    OR
3. That there was an angry mob of smaller roaches rioting against the large roaches in our room

All of this led me to the obvious conclusion that there will be roaches crawling over every inch of my body as I sleep that night.  I did not sleep very well that night.  Hubs slept like a baby.

Flies:

Flies are a great enemy of my decedents.  My parents have a trailer for summer time holiday in which they keep five fly swatters. This is a place where they can get away and enjoy nature, yet they have a flyswatter always within reach.  I think they even have one in the closet sized washroom there.  As a young child my memories of my maternal Grandmother always include a fly swatter.  As a young child my sister, a lover of animals, once caught a “pet” fly and ran to my Grandma in excitement to show her pet only to have it killed as soon as she opened her hands to Granny.

Here I have been able to avoid most flies and purposely don’t give them much though as I pass by the poo in the street, the fish seller on the corner, or at the chicken shop as they swarm around the butcher as he hacks up what will become something I consume in the future.  What did get to me was the fly at lunch the other day.

Having had a poor night of sleep (because of the swarming riot of imaginary roaches) and sitting in a car for two hours we stopped for lunch.  Because I didn’t care and it was easier I let someone else order my lunch.  Now having once been Sally the picky eater myself I was a little dismayed at the tray that was set before me with about five mysterious blobs on it.  I took a deep breath, gave Poohpers the only recognizably yummy food on my tray and started eating.  It wasn’t too bad, I could totally enjoy 3/5ths of the blobs!  Half way through a consumable blob I look down to discover a fly had not only just landed in the blob I was eating, but was now flailing his little legs around trying desperately to free himself from the blob.

Hubs in a misguided attempt at being chivalrous reached over to rid my blob of the fly only to drag the fly through the entire blob and reposition him on the other side.  I politely thank him as I pushed his spoon aside and used the un-flyed side of the blob to bury the fly from view and move on to the other consumable blobs.

After lunch I bought myself a consolatory chocolate bar.