Les Bonnes Choses

"Live and let live," that's what I say. Except when it comes to bugs in my house. Look, I'm all for doing my bit to minimize my environmental trashing. It pains me to throw away plastics. When I cut the grass, I've been dumping the clippings into ever-growing piles along the garbage alley, rather than send it off to landfill. But I draw the line at insects in my house. The most obvious irritants are those that get into your crap and eat it. I'm talking about the earwig you find in your oatmeal (or in Carolyn's case, the half-earwig), or the trail of ants exiting your pantry. [Editor's note: for those of you who may be considering visiting us, we have neither earwigs in our oatmeal, nor trails of ants]. I think we can all agree that those guys suck. But then you've got the "good guys" of the insect world: the spiders and such, who eat the guys that suck. I'm of two minds about those guys. On one hand, they do try to pull their weight and keep your house clean of roaches. But check out this little fella:

That's the business end of a centipede. As I learned from Christine (and later from wikipedia), centipedes are technically on the 'good guys' team. But, damn, they're creepy. Fast little buggers, too. So, which would you rather see: a centipede skittering in your sink, or cockroach skittering on your floor? Neither? Me too. And, really, have you seen the half-assed web jobs that house spiders try to pass off? I don't know if it's just union spiders, but there's not alot of fly traffic going on between the ceiling and the drapes. Laying down some DDT is probably the best thing you could do for those buggers. Save them a slow death due to starvation.