Live and Let Live, Until the Bugs Got in My Chocolate
by Karen Williams | July 22, 2005
Seminole Chronicle
I have had it with you insects! Do you hear me? If you're not out of my kitchen by 8 a.m. tomorrow, I will call in the big guns. We're talking Orkin, Terminix, Massey and the black market in nuclear weapons. You are history.
You had me pegged for a softy, and you were right. I don't like to kill things. Even creepy, crawly, icky things. I've assumed we all have our role to play on God's not-so-green-anymore earth. I've gone out of my way to catch evil-looking spiders in a jar and throw them, at nightfall, over the back wall to start a new life. Years ago, when I worked in a church office, the pastor caught me saving dazed flies from the windowsills and setting them free out the front door. He told the congregation about it the next Sunday, and I became the church laughingstock. It was ungodly.
But that's who I am: a compassionate person. I am also a non-toxic person. I have never willingly placed one drop of herbicide on my back lawn, and I have a jungle of weeds to prove it. I even heard a Tarzan yell out there last week. I learned about nasty chemicals when I lived in eco-friendly Oregon, where you're rounded up if you're caught with a bottle of Round-Up, and a bug sprayer will get you five to 10 years.
But that's history now. You evil weevils have pushed me to the breaking point.
You little brown dots first appeared on the shelves that hold spices and cooking oil. You seemed especially attached to the oil bottle, didn't you? But that was just a trick. After I scrubbed the shelves and set up oil feeding stations on the counters to trap you, you refused to come forth, didn't you?
And then daughter Emily found a horde of you living it up in a box of ice cream cones in the pantry. But these weren't just any ice cream cones. These were our prize stash of sugar cones, you vermin. Do you have any idea how much a teen wants ice cream in a sugar cone after a hot, steaming walk home from summer school? I've not seen Emily so upset since Kermit gave the cold shoulder to Miss Piggy.
You are sneaky. You are cagey - even able to disguise yourselves as spices in a casserole. Once I noticed I had sprinkled too much freshly-ground pepper on the macaroni and cheese. Then, in horror, I realized I hadn't sprinkled any pepper on the macaroni and cheese. You were just taking a steam bath in the cheese sauce.
But the turning point came when I opened a box of Baker's chocolate, anticipating my daily dosage. It was you again, smug and nonchalant inside the individual wrappers. I felt like a contestant on Fear Factor, but with no potential reward.
Weevils, set your affairs in order. Do everything bugs do before they're whisked off to the great flour canister in the sky. Your shelf life is about to expire.
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Copyright 2005, Karen Williams
