The Night of the Living Dead!!! Post # 34

Some stories are best left untold.  But time and again, this one has knocked on my door, begging to be written.  True to form, I ask my self, ‘Is there a moral here?’  As far as I’m concerned, if there is no moral, point, or plot, it’s not worth telling.  But there is a moral. There is a point.  But I’m not so sure there is a plot!

            It was late last summer, 2011 on a warm, sultry, southern night.   Arriving home late from the beach, we pulled in the driveway and, as usual, I stopped to observe the full moon hovering over the Live Oaks and drink in the smell of Sweet Ginger flowers that permeated the air.   I thanked God – as I had done hundreds of times over the previous three years – that I am in the south, particularly Mobile.

            A twinge of guilt lingered in the back of my mind because I was too tired to give a longer audience to a perfectly beautiful night.  But the no-see’ems won out.  As discussed in my post, ‘The Bugs of Mobile’, in order to truly enjoy the south, you must make peace with the bugs. I had done a great job!  It’s not uncommon to find one or two palmetto bugs in your house in the morning, always lying upside down as though they just flip over at sunrise.   But like anything, there must be a balance. 

            I turned on the living room light and saw a palmetto bug – some call them roaches though they’re not even related.  As usual, I found the nearest shoe that is not mine and killed it.   I went to grab a napkin and turned on the kitchen light.   On the wall was another one so I killed that one too, grabbed the napkin, picked it up and headed toward the living room to pick up the last one.  But there was another one so I killed that one too.  That was the first time I had ever seen more than two in a day.  Many times, we don’t see any. 

            I went to put the three gigantic bugs in the garbage.  In the dining room was another one.  At that point, I yelled into Les, who was ready to crawl into bed,   “Something’s not right here!”  True to form, as most men do, he basically patted me on the head telling me I was overreacting.  Then there was another one so I made him get that one.  Then another in the kitchen, three more in the ‘pod’ – a big room in the middle of the house that does nothing – and four in the bathroom.  At that point, I was not only frustrated with the bugs, but also at Les for minimizing it.  Then I realized that in every direction was two or three more.  Les was now concerned!  It was starting to look like the night of the living dead with an attack of gigantic zombie bugs infiltrating the house.

            We were renting and I knew that Barry our Biologist (and landlord), like Les, would never believe this – so I went to the garbage, pulled the previous 20 bugs out and put them in a baggie.  Twenty bugs!!!   NOT!!!  The bugs continued to materialize out of nowhere!  The more that came out, the more frantic I became because Chicken Liver Les would be quite content to leave me fighting the battle and I was afraid of not catching them before they spread to our bedroom or found hiding places.  It became evident that drastic action must be taken!  We were just going to have our very own, old fashioned, bug-stompin!

            I put on a pair of sneakers and ran around stomping them, grabbing them off the walls with napkins, swatting them with fly flappers, anything to keep them from getting away.  Les became frantic, asking me what the hell I was doing, to which I replied angrily, ‘Having a bug stompin party!’  I continued bagging them and was up to 65 when we got the brilliant idea use flea bombs.  We were de-fleaing the dogs the next day and bombing the house to prevent reinfection.  We bombed every room except our bedroom and locked ourselves in for the night.  At least we would be safe in there!  The bugs thought so too!

            About twenty minutes later, Les was sleeping and my adrenalin was still up so I was reading.  Out of my peripheral vision, I saw a bug running up my closet door.  Les assured me there was only one.   As I stood up, I saw three more following their buddy up the wall.    Again, I went on a killing rampage while Les pulled the blankets over his head laughing.  We saw no more that night but in the morning, it looked like a bomb had gone off!  Hmm!  One did!  There were over 100 more.  I bagged every one of them and told Les to take them to our Biologist so he would believe it!   But Les felt that was over doing it.  I had called and told Barry what happened.  Les ran into him outside and he smirked and said, “Were there really that many?”  Les replied, “There was a lot!  I quit counting at 30!” 

            He came in to assure me he supported my story and shared the dialogue.  “Thirty!?!?!  Why did you tell him 30 !?!?   Now he will never believe it!”  I was furious but Les swore that by saying he stopped counting at 30 Barry got the message.  That day Les went sailing and I re-bombed the whole house and went away for five hours, then came back and bleached the house from top to bottom.  We only saw about three bugs the whole rest of the time we lived there.  However, I was petrified it would happen again.  I was telling my sister what happened when she said, “Something had to have changed for them to come in like that!”  I realized we had had a storm a few days before and there was damage to our laundry room wall AND a large live-oak branch fell in the back yard, apparently their home!  They decided that our house would be quite adequate.  We removed the branch and did wall repair.

            About a week later I got a text from Georgia, our biologist’s girlfriend that said, “We had the night of the living dead last night!  Now Barry believes you!”  Apparently, since our house was no longer hospitable, they moved on to Barry’s.  (Karma!  J)  They warned us they were bombing and advised us to do a second round and warned other neighbors as they are prone to keep going until they find a new home! 

            The moral of the story is, much of drama in life is not about what happens but how we react to it.  On the night of the living dead, we were just starting to catch up financially but were not over the hump.  We nearly went to a hotel for a couple of nights stretching our already tight budget, and fought the knee-jerk reaction to call the landlord and throw a fit, causing a good relationship to sour.     Sometimes we get hit with too many bad things at once and the tendency is to overreact and tap out our resources (emotionally, financially, relationally, and physically).  Minor hiccups turn into huge, blown-out-of-proportion monsters where lives, relationships, reputations, health, and finances are damaged – sometimes beyond repair.  When we are seized by an onslaught of bad luck, sometimes all we can do is have an old fashioned bug stompin’, squashing one problem at a time until the barrage slows down enough to clean up the mess and reassess.  But the reality is, if the worse thing that happens today is an invasion of big, zombie palmetto bugs, then life is good!  Real good!