Summer of the Insects

Summer sure is here alright... I don't care when the official day for summer is, or any of that official summer inauguration jazz happens. It's here because I say it's here. And I say it's here because my fine bitter rivals have returned for another round. Every year I fight these jerks, and they always retreat come the fall. It's kind of like Dawn of the Dead... I am locked in my house, with a rag tag group of people, and together we have to last all summer fending off the evils that lay outside. The only difference is that these evils outside are not the cursed undead, they are bugs.

I'm not the only person in the world that hates bugs. Actually, a recent poll shows that over 75% of the human race loathes bugs. But this summer they attacked without warning. It was a Pearl Harbor sized attack that happened as soon as the weather broke.

It was a late Friday evening, I had just arrived home from improv, and I was sitting in the computer room, exhausted. All of a sudden, I see this inch-long black line moving around in the kitchen. I get up and see that it's the scariest of all house-hold insects: the silverfish. I immediately jumped on it with both feet, obliterating it instantly. That's when it all began...

A silverfish is a strange insect. It's kinda like a millipede, kinda like a scorpion, and kind of like a vaudevillian singer all built into one. And for some reason it's a fish! Everyone thinks they are harmless, but in a report that my brother and I looked up online, not only do the bite, but they can live for 2-3 months! That's almost an entire summer! It's a good thing they don't have the capacity for WMD's, otherwise I would have to lead a full scale assault on this imminent threat to Rubino House National Security.

The rest of my team, which includes Danny "Brillo" Rubino, Mom "growls like Marge Simpson" Rubino, and Dad "Coupon Clipper" Rubino isn't doing much to help the cause. My parents just leave our front door open (well, the big wooden one... we have a outer glass door as well, and that is closed) and so it's easy for bugs to crawl in from the porch. Then they are totally passive when it comes to executing them. My parents just sit there and say stuff like "Hey, get a Kleenex!" And I am the one who has to do the deed. Danny just kind of stands up and screams something about "don't use my shoe to kill them!" But I always do.

For a while we decided to capture the bugs and keep them in a small bug prison. We stopped that when I walked in and saw Danny standing there with a silver fish on a leash. It was pretty embarrassing.

Then there was the night when I killed two bugs in a matter of fifteen minutes. I was in the living room playing PS2 at around midnight. Most of the lights in the room were off, with the exception of a small table lamp. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I see one crawl up next to me. I literally LEPT out of my gaming-chair (crouching tiger-style, of course) and freaked out. My parents were upstairs sleeping on the job, and Danny was in the computer room, oblivious to the world thanks to some headphones. I grabbed his shoe and smashed the little invader into the ground. I cleaned it up, and ran to the trash to throw it away (like its going to come back from the dead or something). After creating a bunch of ruckus with that incident, I saw another one only minutes later. I yelled "ANOTHER ONE!" and grabbed Danny's shoe yet again. This time I didn't hesitate. You could say I was like Jesse Ventura in the movie "Predator." I just went to town on that thing. Of course I made a fair amount of noise (about on par with the noise level created by an exploding humming bird) and caused Danny to rush to the scene. By then the mess was already cleaned up, but I was still frazzled.

Since that fateful evening, I have been seeing little bugs all over the place. Bugs so small that they squeeze through our window screens! I have been lining out outside doors with bath towels. I am also considering letting Hampton out of his cage and training him to be a guard hamster.

The insect war is just beginning for the summer. Last summer, including the beginning of the school year, I was brutally attacked by mosquitos. Word on the street is that Cicadas are on there way this summer. Didn't they come here last year? Well... I'd better get out the tennis racket and the goggles. It's going to get messy!

Posted by MikeRubino at May 13, 2004 11:45 PM