Trina Machacek: Bug popping

Yes this is about bugs. Big bugs, little bugs, bugs of all sizes. Here I must say that size does not matter. A bug is a bug. I really don’t have much of anything against bugs. They are after all creatures just like me. Having been created for reasons that I have come to believe I will not know why until it is my time to learn the mysteries of life — and death. I’m here, they’re here and thankfully I am very happy about the fact that I am bigger! And I wear shoes. You can take it from there.

Last Taco Tuesday I was having a conversation over tacos about bugs. OK, it was after dinner as such conversations are not dinner friendly. Bugs apparently are not something that we non-entomologists like to have come into our homes. I just read a funny thing that a writer wrote wanting to know why Noah let two mosquitos onto the Arc! All I know is that the mosquitos and flies are why Noah kept the door open for the spiders! Ants however. Ants are unexplainable. The conversation soon turned to earwigs. Eeeeeeww. Yes earwigs.

I have acquired what I am calling a pet earwig. In my bathtub. It seems this bug has it out for me. I wash it down the drain and the next morning it is back. Flicking its devil’s horned tail at me. I was going to smooch it but I thought that the humane thing to do was just wash it away. Well the third morning it showed up? It was, well let’s say it bugged out via a couple of squares of toilet paper to the nearby bathroom throne! And that is where the story of bugs on Taco Tuesday entered a sound effect stage. Bug popping.

As the discussion grew the bugs got bigger, badder, and weirder. Then onto bugs harder to dispatch to bug heaven because of the pop they make when stepped on. It started with stories of the cricket infestation that we here in Nevada have had this year. These crickets create quite a stir when they arrive. They sleep under the ground until conditions are just right then just when you think it is safe to play outside they surround sandboxes, homes, towns, highways and eventually whole counties! When the first ones show up their numbers are not all that disturbing. At least that is what I thought a few years ago when they showed up at my home. I would go out and as they hopped I would squish them. I called my new game, “Hop. Hop. Hop. Squish!” Until I got kinda nauseous at the pop, pop, pop of the bugs at the squish part. So I of course brought up that story during the bug conversation of Taco Tuesday. Yuck!

The conversation continued about the pop that different bugs make, you know, when you squish ‘em. I mentioned my pet earwig and its demise and the hardiness of the earwig as a whole. I’m here to tell you that I have no knowledge of earwig life and times and skeletal make-up. Just in case anyone wants to school me on this, I don’t want to know either. I do know however that an earwig goes crunch-pop when it meets its maker as it goes off on a piece of toilet paper into the tody and down into that dark good night. But! Yes a bug infested “but.” HAHA But it takes some pretty hefty finger action to pop an earwig. Again. Yuck.

Ants were discussed and it was found they are the sneakiest little buggers. Once they find their way into your kitchen they are harder to get rid of than paying off a credit card by just paying the minimum payment! YIKERS Toward the end of the conversation, or maybe the bottom of the glasses of margaritas, flying bugs were lightly mentioned. They bring up a whole new line of what happens when one meets its maker. They splat and then walls need to be washed afterward.

When I get surrounded by Cat Spiders, which seem to really like my house and they go pop way to loud and make me all icky after the third one, I call the most wonderful guy to come and spray EVERYTHING I have to keep me safe and let me sleep without feeling creepy crawlers. I appreciate that things that go slithering along my house foundation do not bother him. Everyone with pop-able bugs needs to have someone special like a good exterminator who then becomes a good friend in their lives. Especially when you are out numbered and have had enough of that pop to last you until the next thing “bugs” you.

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or at itybytrina@yahoo.com