Bug Mystery Solved...I Hope

I can’t believe it’s already September! When time passed in the States I didn’t really notice it but here it’s like every time you flip a new calendar page there are new birthdays to write down! New holidays! New Mondays to write “M” on, meaning I need to take my Mefloquine. New travel days to note. It’s kind of exciting.

Anyway. On to the bugs. Two people have now told me they came from my chicken. DAMN YOU MERYL!!! She is not living here anymore but the fact that the bugs have been here SINCE Meryl was living here turns my stomach. Today when I get up Alysun comes over (turns out he is the half-brother [same mom] of the dude who built my house and then mysteriously died) and I put together a bucket of dirty clothes, eat some oatmeal (send me more instant oatmeal!) and then spray ¾ of the “Insect Killer” can throughout my whole house (all doors and windows closed). Alysun goes to the Carrefour to shoot the shit while I am getting ready but I finish so I watch the carpenters (brick layers?) who are building next door as they come over to take some of the pile of sand that sits in my yard. Yogi barks. I yell at Yogi.

Alysun comes back and meticulously folds all my dirty clothes before we finally leave for the creek. We go to HIS creek…the one close to his house, which is kinda far, instead of the closest one to MY house which is Balla Bappo but requires traversing down a big mountain with a not-exactly-bien-fait path.

Anyway. We get to the creek. Yogi hates water and doesn’t want to go across but Alysun forces him. I’m like, “Yogi you’re getting wet anyway cause I’m gonna wash you!” In the back of my mind I hope there are no snails in the creek so I don’t get schisto (Chris-Heijn recently had schisto). It’s utterly curable but having any illness here is a pain.

So I wash all my underwear while Alysun washes all my other stuff. I am useless at washing clothes here and if I have to do it I do it in private so people don’t laugh at me.

I bathe Yogi, which is more like, I wrestle Yogi in a creek, but he gets wet and gets soap on him so that’ll do (that’s kinda my philosophy on washing my clothes, too…hmmm….)

Anyway when I get home the bugs are still going strong. I make all kinds of valiant efforts over the next couple of days, removing all food and dishes from the house, baking them in the sun, two more bug bombings. The can says it should be able to successfully knock out 80 rooms. I used the whole can. I have two rooms. Bugs STILL going strong. All I have managed to kill are several crickets whom I found in their death throes and gave mercy stomps to.

So apparently there is a fumigator dude. And he can come to your house and spray and in 30 minutes everything is dead. I wonder how much this costs. But I will pay it, I am so sick of these bugs. And as an added benefit, it’ll kill any other unwanted bugs currently shacking up chez moi. I wonder if it will kill the mice, too. I am sick of them. I can’t kill them myself because unlike bugs they won’t die quick and I HATE watching things in their death throes. Today I tried to lock one of the mice out. I saw him heading out the back door so I stuffed a cloth under it and have vigilantly guarded it whenever I have to go outside. He probably has several ways in, though. I remember when my mice were not bothersome. What happened to the good old days? I think they got spoiled.