I'm pretty sure that I hate summer. The heat and humidity of the past week have left me sitting around in wet sheets with a high velocity fan blowing directly on me while I gulp rapidly melting ice water like there's no tomorrow. In between gulps of water I slap myself. I set my water down and slap myself again and then scratch my head, arms, legs and other various body parts uncontrollably.
No, this isn't some bizarre form of tics associated with a mid-life onset of Tourettes Syndrome. Let me try and explain what has me feeling like I have insects crawling all over my body.
A couple of days ago Gareth was leaving for work and almost as soon as he walked out the door he walked right back down, set his laptop case down, looked at me with a pained expression on his face and said, "Whatever you do, don't go outside. Just don't!" Of course, once he turned around the first thing I did was step outside and immediately regretted it. I was barefoot and my entire foot was, in milliseconds coated with bugs. I almost completely lost my sh!t on the front deck of our house.
I ran back into the house, slammed the door and stomped my feet around and flung my arms over my head in such a manner that Gareth wasn't sure if I was having a Grand Mal seizure or not. My entire body felt like it was crawling with whatever the hell the bugs that had coated the entire house and the deck and then were trying to swarm me, were. I didn't physically have anything on me but I couldn't shake feeling like I did.
For the last couple of months, we've been having horrible issues with something that swarms the house at night and unless we close all the windows and turn off the lights, they get into the house. The two air conditioning units that the landlord recently installed have helped a little bit, but somehow these flying things (we have no-see-ums by the thousands and the other things we think are mayflies), still get in, despite closed doors and windows. We wake up with areas nearest the toaster and night lights, and alarm clocks, and the blinking lights on the wireless server, covered in bugs. They seem to be attracted to any little bit of light. I have woken up to the area on my nightstand nearest my alarm clock literally crawling with hundreds of these bugs.
Have I mentioned I don't do well around insects? OF ANY KIND! Yeah, well I don't.
So back on this morning from a few days ago, Gareth grabbed one of the cameras and started taking pictures of the exterior walls of our house which were coated with these bugs.
We're not altogether sure these are mayflies. Frankly, I don't care what they are, I just wish they'd go away! People keep telling us they'll leave soon, but we've been dealing with this since early May and after coming home from the grocery store late last night to discover two bats just hanging out on the screen door, I'm afraid to hope they'll leave soon. Bats feed on insects and as the house was covered with them again last night, I'm now wondering if we're going to be laying in bed as swarms of hungry bats pelt the house looking for some fast food? I'm not down with the bats either. I know for a fact that the two who were chillin' on the front doors were looking at my hair like it would be a great place to nest. Hey...don't judge. The humidity is a pain in the ass and it makes my hair do odd unusual things.
The other reason the insects (we're now dealing with wasps too...inside the house!), and now the bats are driving me completely well, batty, is the fact that the cats are going crazy. If we leave the doors open anywhere near dusk, the damned fur beasties launch themselves into the screens...
One of these days the screens on the outer doors are no longer going to stop a 20lb cat and I'm going to go ahead and let Geronimo enjoy a bat/moth/mayfly kabob!
