A Slug in the Rug
The other day after the kiddies had gone to bed and I had returned to the living room with a much-anticipated glass of wine, I noticed something very odd on the floor near the back door (yes, our back door opens into the living room, it’s government housing). I took a brief look at it and then went back to the couch, and then suddenly realized that what I had on the floor by the door was a 2 inch long slug. A slug in my living room. How do you not notice a slug coming into your living room? Slugs are not particularly small or nimble, they are, there’s just no other way to say it, sluggish. To have reached the spot where I found him, the slug must have been on the move for at least a half hour. How did a slug enter my house and move to within inches of where my kids (who notice absolutely everything) were lying on the floor watching “Unwrapped” before bed? One time I found a shriveled up worm in our basement, but we never went down into the basement, so he had weeks to get into the house and reach the middle of the floor, not to mention the fact that worms are rather fleet wrigglers in comparison to slugs
I briefly pondered what to do with it, momentarily flashing back to childhood and thinking “Hey, I’ll get the salt shaker,” but realizing what a mess that might make on the rug, I went and got an armload of paper towels to make sure that no part of me would touch any part of the slug. I know slugs are not dangerous and don’t bite, but I still have a horrifying shudder-inducing memory of one warm summer evening when I was running up my parent’s front walk and planted my bare foot squarely on the slimy back of a rather large slug. If only I had caught it on the sole of my foot, but no, it squished between all of my toes, an episode that remains one of the more disgusting experiences of my life. Anyway, safely armed with paper towels I scooped up my little slimy visitor and rolled him up and put him in the trash. We have one of those “butterfly” trashcans that you have to step on to open and is very effective at keeping the children from playing in the trash, and presumably is sturdy enough to contain a small slug. However, once I had placed him inside the can, I began to think about what an industrious little slug he was, how he had moved so quickly into the living room while I was putting the kids to bed, and how he was more than likely working his way out of the paper towels and getting ready to slither onto the inside of the lid of the trashcan. I knew that the next morning as I squashed some trash down into the can, I would more than likely make contact once again with that treacherous little slug. What else could I do? I found some shoes, carefully and quickly tied up the trash bag, and took it outside.
(I can only recall one other time that what I put in the trash was so gross that I had to take it out immediately, even though I was in my pajamas and dreading the thought of going back outside. One Sunday evening I ordered a club sandwich from the normally reliable Rittenhouse deli in Ardmore, and settled onto my couch to read the paper and have a little dinner. Imagine my horror when I unwrapped the sandwich and instead of a delicious turkey and bacon sandwich, I found myself face to face with some sort of tuna fish sandwich garnished with hardboiled eggs. Who would design and construct such a sandwich? Even now I feel as if I might gag.)
When I finally got back to my cocktail and pondered a little further about the intrusion of the slug, I remembered another bug encounter that my sister and I had while sharing an apartment in Philadelphia. We had gone out to a concert one night, had a great time, drank a lot, and come home late. We were so tired, we both came in the door and headed toward the kitchen to get some water and head off to bed. What we found on the kitchen floor was a huge long furry millipede looking thing. I say it was millipede looking, because when you learn about millipedes and centipedes in school, they always seem kind of cute, like little creatures that just didn’t know they didn’t need so many legs. That perception, I must say, is completely wrong. They are not cute or even ordinary, they are menacing and mean. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but I got it in my head that I could somehow confront this bug, squash it (like a bug), and continue off to bed. My sister will vouch for me when I say that as I approached the bug and went to try to terminate it, it wheeled around and reared its head at me. That’s right, reared its leg-covered head at me. As drunk 25-year olds being threatened by an angry creature are bound to do, my sister and I screamed and ran into the other room. When we returned to the kitchen to try and come up with a plan, the bug had disappeared under the oven. This was a rather sobering development. Since we did not have a flashlight to continue to hunt the bug, we had to just shuffle off to bed and hope that the bug was through with us. The next day, after a rather fitful night sleep, we told our landlord about our ordeal. He responded “Oh yeah, that’s a thousand-legger, they’re all over the place around here.” I believe the response we were hoping for was “Oh yeah? I’ll call an exterminator,” but clearly that was not in the cards. Although we never saw another thousand-legger, we did keep a sharp eye out for it and warn all of our friends not to try to confront one alone.
I am aware that most bugs are not out to get me (except for mosquitoes and ticks), and I do occasionally let spiders live in my house if they are small and stay near the ceiling. I don’t chase the crickets out of the closets even though they tend to jump out and scare me. I don’t step on ants outside, and in fact I don’t let my children do it either (I tell them the ants are screaming “Mommy, there’s a kid in our house!”). I can appreciate butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, the occasional praying mantis. However, I have been stung by a bee on the bottom of my foot, I have watched mosquitoes swarm all over my sweet unsuspecting children, and I have seen the rather sickening spectacle of weevils rising to the top of a pot of boiling water following the addition of what must have been ancient pasta. These are hard incidents to shake off. I suppose if I lived in Africa, or even Florida, I would have to find a way to live with the buggies (and in some cases, eat the buggies). But since I live in the mid-Atlantic area where every winter we get a respite from most bugs, I am always hoping I will find a way to live bug free all year round.
As a naïve newlywed, I figured that my big brave army man husband would take care of the bugs for me. Unfortunately, one afternoon I came home to find him in the kitchen with some spray bleach in one hand and a racquetball racquet in the other, doing battle with what he claimed was an enormous bee that he had just chased into the disposal and destroyed. I never saw the bee, it may have been quite large, but I would have thought that a rolled up magazine would be the most high tech weapon my husband wielded. Apparently, in his view of the bug world, bugs that bite must be met with overwhelming force (the old “shock and awe”) and bugs that do not bite (namely ants) should be allowed to live in our house. If I don’t want ants in the house, I must get rid of them myself, but my husband will go on the offensive against ants outside the house, which I am totally against. Clearly in addition to talking about splitting household chores, saving money, and raising kids, marriage books should encourage couples to talk about their philosophies regarding pest management.
At least thanks to my husband’s career, I am spared from the one activity that a true bugphobe cannot stomach, and that is camping. My husband’s viewpoint is that he has to camp for a living, so when he is not working, he does not want to be camping. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I will happily listen to crickets and cicadas, but I don’t want to sleep with them. And for now, unfortunately, the army thinks that my husband should be fighting terrorism in Afghanistan rather than fighting bugs in our house, so I guess I am on my own. The slug I found in my living room is just the beginning what will likely be a long year of chasing and swatting and squishing bugs to keep the house bug free for the kiddies and me.
I briefly pondered what to do with it, momentarily flashing back to childhood and thinking “Hey, I’ll get the salt shaker,” but realizing what a mess that might make on the rug, I went and got an armload of paper towels to make sure that no part of me would touch any part of the slug. I know slugs are not dangerous and don’t bite, but I still have a horrifying shudder-inducing memory of one warm summer evening when I was running up my parent’s front walk and planted my bare foot squarely on the slimy back of a rather large slug. If only I had caught it on the sole of my foot, but no, it squished between all of my toes, an episode that remains one of the more disgusting experiences of my life. Anyway, safely armed with paper towels I scooped up my little slimy visitor and rolled him up and put him in the trash. We have one of those “butterfly” trashcans that you have to step on to open and is very effective at keeping the children from playing in the trash, and presumably is sturdy enough to contain a small slug. However, once I had placed him inside the can, I began to think about what an industrious little slug he was, how he had moved so quickly into the living room while I was putting the kids to bed, and how he was more than likely working his way out of the paper towels and getting ready to slither onto the inside of the lid of the trashcan. I knew that the next morning as I squashed some trash down into the can, I would more than likely make contact once again with that treacherous little slug. What else could I do? I found some shoes, carefully and quickly tied up the trash bag, and took it outside.
(I can only recall one other time that what I put in the trash was so gross that I had to take it out immediately, even though I was in my pajamas and dreading the thought of going back outside. One Sunday evening I ordered a club sandwich from the normally reliable Rittenhouse deli in Ardmore, and settled onto my couch to read the paper and have a little dinner. Imagine my horror when I unwrapped the sandwich and instead of a delicious turkey and bacon sandwich, I found myself face to face with some sort of tuna fish sandwich garnished with hardboiled eggs. Who would design and construct such a sandwich? Even now I feel as if I might gag.)
When I finally got back to my cocktail and pondered a little further about the intrusion of the slug, I remembered another bug encounter that my sister and I had while sharing an apartment in Philadelphia. We had gone out to a concert one night, had a great time, drank a lot, and come home late. We were so tired, we both came in the door and headed toward the kitchen to get some water and head off to bed. What we found on the kitchen floor was a huge long furry millipede looking thing. I say it was millipede looking, because when you learn about millipedes and centipedes in school, they always seem kind of cute, like little creatures that just didn’t know they didn’t need so many legs. That perception, I must say, is completely wrong. They are not cute or even ordinary, they are menacing and mean. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but I got it in my head that I could somehow confront this bug, squash it (like a bug), and continue off to bed. My sister will vouch for me when I say that as I approached the bug and went to try to terminate it, it wheeled around and reared its head at me. That’s right, reared its leg-covered head at me. As drunk 25-year olds being threatened by an angry creature are bound to do, my sister and I screamed and ran into the other room. When we returned to the kitchen to try and come up with a plan, the bug had disappeared under the oven. This was a rather sobering development. Since we did not have a flashlight to continue to hunt the bug, we had to just shuffle off to bed and hope that the bug was through with us. The next day, after a rather fitful night sleep, we told our landlord about our ordeal. He responded “Oh yeah, that’s a thousand-legger, they’re all over the place around here.” I believe the response we were hoping for was “Oh yeah? I’ll call an exterminator,” but clearly that was not in the cards. Although we never saw another thousand-legger, we did keep a sharp eye out for it and warn all of our friends not to try to confront one alone.
I am aware that most bugs are not out to get me (except for mosquitoes and ticks), and I do occasionally let spiders live in my house if they are small and stay near the ceiling. I don’t chase the crickets out of the closets even though they tend to jump out and scare me. I don’t step on ants outside, and in fact I don’t let my children do it either (I tell them the ants are screaming “Mommy, there’s a kid in our house!”). I can appreciate butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, the occasional praying mantis. However, I have been stung by a bee on the bottom of my foot, I have watched mosquitoes swarm all over my sweet unsuspecting children, and I have seen the rather sickening spectacle of weevils rising to the top of a pot of boiling water following the addition of what must have been ancient pasta. These are hard incidents to shake off. I suppose if I lived in Africa, or even Florida, I would have to find a way to live with the buggies (and in some cases, eat the buggies). But since I live in the mid-Atlantic area where every winter we get a respite from most bugs, I am always hoping I will find a way to live bug free all year round.
As a naïve newlywed, I figured that my big brave army man husband would take care of the bugs for me. Unfortunately, one afternoon I came home to find him in the kitchen with some spray bleach in one hand and a racquetball racquet in the other, doing battle with what he claimed was an enormous bee that he had just chased into the disposal and destroyed. I never saw the bee, it may have been quite large, but I would have thought that a rolled up magazine would be the most high tech weapon my husband wielded. Apparently, in his view of the bug world, bugs that bite must be met with overwhelming force (the old “shock and awe”) and bugs that do not bite (namely ants) should be allowed to live in our house. If I don’t want ants in the house, I must get rid of them myself, but my husband will go on the offensive against ants outside the house, which I am totally against. Clearly in addition to talking about splitting household chores, saving money, and raising kids, marriage books should encourage couples to talk about their philosophies regarding pest management.
At least thanks to my husband’s career, I am spared from the one activity that a true bugphobe cannot stomach, and that is camping. My husband’s viewpoint is that he has to camp for a living, so when he is not working, he does not want to be camping. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I will happily listen to crickets and cicadas, but I don’t want to sleep with them. And for now, unfortunately, the army thinks that my husband should be fighting terrorism in Afghanistan rather than fighting bugs in our house, so I guess I am on my own. The slug I found in my living room is just the beginning what will likely be a long year of chasing and swatting and squishing bugs to keep the house bug free for the kiddies and me.
posted by Shannon at 9:49 AM
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