Alright friends, settle in, this is a long one. Get a snack and some caffeine and prepare to take several breaks. (I’ve designated bathroom breaks throughout the post in case you get so absorbed with the minutiae of my life that you forget to go)

It’s no secret that I don’t like animals.  Big and small, eight-legged or four, we’re never going to come to an understanding. What decent human doesn’t accept the unconditional love of a dog, you ask. Here’s my problem with dogs. As loving, cuddly (I don’t cuddle, strike one!) and loyal they are, they have a tendency to stick their nose in other dogs’ butts and then want to take that same nose and nuzzle with you. My issues with hygiene prevent me from accepting the love of a dog. Just as much as dogs don’t understand my issues with hygiene, I do not understand their lack thereof.

I do not and will not ever apologize for shooing your dog away by swinging my purse full of heavy objects at it when it bum-rushes me at the door after I’ve told you repeatedly I’m afraid of dogs. If I’ve ever told you that by the way, it’s a lie. But I’ve found that “I’m afraid of dogs” is more likely to get you to lock up your slobbering beast than “I don’t like dogs.” There is only one dog I’ve ever loved besides my own (yes, I was allowed to own a pet at one point in life), and that is Toni. Toni is the best dog in the entire world because not only does she apparently lack the energy to greet you with enthusiasm, she does not sniff you in an intrusive manner and she cuddles next to you and not ON you. Because Toni is Toni, I let her sit on my lap and she promptly falls into one of many daily naps. My kind of dog.

Dogs are about as close to human as an animal can get. I don’t count primates because I don’t know too many people who own one as a pet and the last domesticated primate I heard about ripped a woman’s face off. She got an Oprah interview out of it and I’m sure she’s been written into Oprah’s will so life without a face is 5% less crummy. I digress. So it’s pretty logical to assume that animals lower down on the chain of life, particularly insects are of little interest to me. They are only of interest when they are invading my living space and the smaller they get, the more ridiculous I become. My fear of insects has no name. There’s no name for the type of hysteria that occurs when a water bug trying to escape the summer heat just like everyone else scuttles across the hallway floor trapping me in my room until my mom is brought from a dead sleep as a result of my Saw III-like screaming and comes to take care of it the best way she knows how. She is essentially useless as well because I inherited this shameful behavior from her, but here is my mom’s problem. Whenever a bug interrupts our daily lives, the person who does the most screaming is not responsible for the search and destroy mission. Despite my lack of exercise and the occasional cigarette, my lungs operate at the level of an Olympic sprinter when I see bugs in my house.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “They’re more scared of you than you are of them,” not only would I be a rich woman, but I’d use those dollars on scientific tests to prove that I am more afraid of these intruders than they are of me. Do you think I think about that when this disgusting home invader catches me off guard in the privacy of my home when I’m trying to watch Judge Judy? Don’t you think if that was ever a logical thought to me, I wouldn’t be jumping like a kangaroo over furniture to get away from it? Do you think I enjoy elevating myself to a level of stress that can induce grand mal seizures and heart attacks? Yes, it IS all in my head, I realize that. 

And yes, they I call them intruders because I don’t believe the life cycle of a water bug, or any animal who lives on the false assumption that “mi casa es su casa”, is longer than the time I’ve lived in this house. As far as I’m concerned I was here first and even if I wasn’t, my grandparents were here before me and that should count for something.

(BATHROOM BREAK. I will not be responsible for you smelling up the chair you’re sitting in. Also a good time to pull up an excel sheet and pretend to work if you’re at the office.)

My mom has a three step process to destroying insects in our house: chemicals, time and the vacuum. When the invader is spotted, my mom unscrews the top off the first bottle in her line of sight and throws its contents in the direction of the runner. In the summer when water bugs and the like become somewhat of a terrorist threat in our home we stage bottles of raid, bleach, Windex, and Simple Green all throughout the house so at a moment’s notice in the case that the invader isn’t trapped in one of 18 glue traps, step one can be utilized with any one of these household products. In the case that the terrorist is not drowned in a river of Clorox, we wait, standing on chairs and surveying our house (which as you know is Grey Gardens without the filth) looking for signs of movement.

Ever since I can remember, my eye has been very sharp to small movements and I’m going to credit my fear of multi-legged invaders for this special gift. It’s illegal for me to drive without glasses because I can’t read the street while I’m sitting at a light, but if there’s a roach crawling on that sign, I’ll see it. So even in our mess of a house, when the terrorist decides to make the great escape, dragging two of his Clorox burned legs behind him (yes! a hit!), we see him and we have the vacuum ready. Our vacuum has one purpose in our house, insect graveyard. We don’t have to worry about anything crawling out because of all of the dust from years of vacuuming. Although my mom does and tapes up the suction cup with that heavy duty grey duct tape just in case.  I imagine they instantly suffocate upon arrival and go to some kind of water bug purgatory in which they are punished for ruining my day and making me lose my voice. 

My embarrassing fear of small animals and insects has been witnessed outside of my house to strangers and friends alike who look on in horror as I re-enact an exorcism trying to get out of the general vicinity of where the assailant is. Before I launch into the ultimate story of family betrayal, let me share with you two instances of public shame that you can think of next time you embarrass yourself in public and say “well at least I didn’t…..”

….get stuck in a whirling vortex of pigeons on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Pigeons are glorified rats with the ability to fly-it’s that simple. I’m not the best driver, but kamikaze pigeons flying into my window and making me jump the curb on a busy street don’t help my image. When they’re in  packs, they’re shifty and restless and the slightest movement makes them jump and flap their filth all over. It just grosses me out. My friends of course don’t take my fear/disgust of pigeons seriously and when we were  walking down the 3rd Street Promenade on a busy afternoon, thought it would be funny to walk past instead of detour around a pack of pigeons snacking on the carcass of a baguette. Not wanting to make a scene, I gingerly followed them and the birds, naturally sensing my disgust began to flap and shift and make generally offensive movements. My response:  take off screaming and running until my legs gave out or until I didn’t feel like I could hear flapping noises in my ear. Several of them took flight disturbing several patio diners who were not pleased with my mid-afternoon freak out, but I was more concerned with not getting molted on so I waited two blocks before I looked back and saw my friends across the street doubled over in laughter, legs crossed and trying not to piss themselves. 

…..have to have my gaysian neighbor kill the moth in my apartment. The summers I stayed and took summer school, I lived on campus in apartments that were built in the 70s before the threat of global warming, so air conditioning was low on the priority list of needed functioning appliances to survive in the apartment. For this reason my roommate and I left the front door open frequently which resulted in continual invaders most of which thought that our kitchen light was a “Welcome Home” sign. One evening a moth, who was probably hailed by his peers as King Kong and revered in the moth community, welcomed himself into the apartment and after 90 seconds of screaming and throwing kitchenware at it, my roommate and I went to get a neighbor to assist us. The first door we knocked on was an international student from China who favored Rock’n’Republics, white muscle shirts, studded belts and snakeskin shoes. His teeth were perfect, his skin was perfect, and his collection of assorted hairsprays were perfect. After we explained our situation, without missing a beat, he took a can of what appeared to be Chinese Aquanet and followed us to our apartment where he valiantly took down King Kong and wouldn’t even accept my roommates thank you gift of Adderrall and a half-full flask of Smirnoff. 

(BATHROOM AND/OR SNACK BREAK. Gotta keep your strength up! Also, maybe you should do some work right now if it’s called for….)

With that thorough history of my run-ins with what I refuse to believe are God’s creatures, the following story shouldn’t shock you. It may make you re-evaluate our friendship, but shock, it will not. 

The scene: My house
The time: The summer before senior year of high school, June-ish
The assailant: Water bug

I was days away from heading to Washington DC for two weeks to attend a leadership convention which turned out to be nothing more than two weeks of pretending I learned anything in US History or was interested in anything but shopping in Georgetown. I don’t like being out of my comfort zone and traveling makes me nervous because it’s a situation in which I’m never in control. Flight’s late? I can’t control that. Get stuck next to a man on the plane who is morally against showering? I can’t control that. Vomit-inducing turbulence? I can’t control that. In high school however I didn’t know how to manifest those feelings into anything but a bad attitude so for the weeks leading up to the trip, conveniently after my mom had paid over $2,000 for me to go, I did nothing but fight her about going. No, she could not get a refund. No, you can not get upgraded to first class so you can have a row to yourself. No, I cannot go in your place. No, I do not believe you have the chickenpox. I was shit out of luck and had to start packing.

I eventually dragged the suitcase we use for long vacations from the garage into the hallway, opened up and got to work. We used this suitcase for long vacations because it seemed to have been created to smuggle bodies. My mom and I could both fit into the cave-like suitcase if we were curled in the fetal position, but we fit nonetheless. So by the time I got it filled halfway it was legitimately heavy and unpacking to find anything just wasn’t an option. The water bug invader changed those plans.

I saw him first, creeping down the hallway from the garage towards my suitcase at a steady clip, his pace picking up with every champagne-flute shattering shriek that came sailing out of my mouth. I remember hurdling over the suitcase, down the adjacent hall and into the living room and doing what I call the tent revival dance upon arrival. Bugs in my house make my skin crawl and the hair stand up on my arms so the only reasonable solution to this unwanted sensation is to shake it out. It’s a good form of exercise if I did it consistently as I’m doing somewhat of a running man meets jumping jacks meets jazz hands on meth dance. Add that to what is non-stop howling and you have  the tent revival dance. I’ve yet to work myself into fainting. But I’m still young. 

My mom knows the shriek, and there was no need to ask why. Just where.

“WHERE IS IT MELIA?”

She was asking from her room, door closed as to not let Wally the water bug in her sanctuary. Nevermind that I had lost line of sight once I vaulted over the suitcase and wasn’t sure if Wally was rooting around in my clothes and marking his territory or in my room sending signals to his buddies about the comfy digs he was checking out.

“Suitcase!” I called back mid-running man.

“Push it away from my door,” she demanded.

“No, I hope it goes in your room.”

“Don’t you say that! Don’t you say it!”

My heart rate had slowed just short of bursting and I crept to the edge of the hallway to investigate. I asked my mom where the bug spray was. She didn’t know.

“What do you mean you don’t know? This is an emergency. How do you not know?”

“Check one of the bottles out there.”

“They’re all unlabeled.”

“So smell them, you know what Raid smells like. Use your head.” I’m more than familiar the smell of Raid,  better known as sweet relief, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy sniffing bottles of foreign liquids for kicks. We went back and forth like this for minutes before she finally poked her head out of the door, surveyed what was now the dead zone, and ran out of her room grabbing the first bottle she could swipe.

Moments later Wally came scrambling around from behind my suitcase which sent me into another fit of hysterics and seemed to give my mom some newfound courage as she charged towards the suitcase like a linebacker in the Superbowl spilling the contents of the bottle as she barreled towards the target area. What felt like minutes probably transpired in less than a minute, but like microwave minutes, fear minutes always feel longer. 

During the chemical spill, Mom had lost sight of Wally and was now slowly backing away from the scene as not to be caught in the dead zone should Wally re-appear. 

“Did you get him?” I asked.

“I don’t see him, but I poured half the bottle on the floor. And this smells like Pine Sol, so wherever he steps he’s gonna be hurting.”

But Wally was not hurt. Alive, well and unburned by the power of Pine Sol, Wally ran from under the suitcase, sending my mom back towards me. Before she made it down the hall, the Pine Sol betrayed her and she slipped and twisted something in her knee. I looked on in horror as Wally ran back under the suitcase and my mom lay in a puddle of all-purpose cleaner. 

I asked her if she was ok and she said she wasn’t sure. She hurt her knee and needed help.

“I can’t,” I replied. “What else do you need?”

“I need you to get me up before I die of Pine Sol inhalation.”

“Again, I said I can’t do that. I’m going to call someone.”

“DON’T! This is embarrassing enough, I don’t need any witnesses.”

“Well I guess you’re just going to lay there until your knee gets better because I’m not going down there.”

“MELIA!”

“I will not.”

“Just drag me. Grab my arms and drag me.” I gave this some thought, at least if I only grabbed her arms, if I needed to make a quick retreat I could just drop her arms and sprint. I could do that. 

I tiptoed forward and just as I was leaning over to grab her wrists, Wally re-appeared and I took off.

“Don’t leave me here!” she shrieked. “Where is it? Oh my GOD! Do not leave me here!”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t be serious. This is not happening right now. It just isn’t. HELP. ME.”

“WHAT PART OF I CANNOT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?” My hyperventilating had dissolved into full on sobbing. This was getting pathetic. So I did the only thing I knew how. I called my cousin.

“Your mom did what?” he asked. “Is this a prank?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? Do we joke about bugs?”

“Right. Give me ten minutes. And stop crying. You’re being ridiculous.”

Within 15 minutes, he had my mom off the floor and in the recliner, my suitcase emptied and Wally captured and subsequently murdered execution style. 

Two days later, a spider took residence near the ceiling  in my room. Again I did the only thing I knew how. I stood behind my mom to make sure she didn’t fall as she climbed the step ladder in her leg brace to kill it. Priorities.