Years ago I watched a NOVA show telling how many millions or billions of life in the form of bacteria and whatever live in the human body. The news was somewhat chilling and I imagined everything as though under an electron microscope. It made me bathe more carefully and wash all my parts (especially my eye lashes after I learned they are full of mites) to which I had paid less attention.
Today a friend asked me to come over and check out her pantry because mice had been in there and a trap had been set which she couldn't bear to see. She was planning to serve anchovies in a Caesar Salad for our lunch and the can of anchovies was in her pantry. After telling her I had lots of cans and would bring her one, I began to think of the many mice with which I have dealt over the years as they invaded my laundry to nest, been trapped in the set tub in the basement, unable to get out (once even in the washing machine when the top had been left open), and worst of all, racing by me in the kitchen. I found bits of chocolate where I knew I had not left it. Sometimes they were gray, sometimes a dark brown. I'm not a mouse racist but I wanted them out of my house, whatever color they were. (I have always had a rule that nothing was to live with me that didn't pay room or board.)
Having grown up on a working farm, all sorts of critters were familiar but we kept them out of the house. The farm cat kept the mice population within control. The farm dog kept snakes, other cats, and lots of other poor animals that might have wandered in convinced they wanted to be elsewhere. My mother, having been born in a country with poisonous snakes, was terrified of even the little harmless garden or garter snake. One scream and the dog cleared the territory of them.
For years spiders were terrifying. I guess I had fallen for all the myths and seen too many movies in the days where the cameras magnified them into gigantic size and had them doing horrible things to humans. Since central air conditioning where opening windows is no longer necessary, I see far fewer of them. My treatment for my own terror was to buy a book on spiders and soon learned that we live in a zone that has no lethal ones, there are no brown spiders, and while I have occasionally seen a nursery spider I no longer get near hysterical.
Ants are nuisance invaders. The cure for all the creepers, crawlers and fliers is 'never leave uncovered food on a counter'. I suppose I should be grateful to the wildlife in my house because it has taught me to cover or put away food immediately. However, I resent something crawling up my leg while I am at the computer only to see that it is an unfortunate wandering ant soon sent to ant Heaven. Carpenter ants are around but there are so many myths about them I never know whom to trust though fortunately I don't seem to have those in the house. I used to have fantasies of my house one day falling down on top of me as the tunnels by these 'wood-eating (not so)' insects made beams give way. It even comes as a shock to realize that tiny little cement ants can ruin a walkway of cement and make it crack by tunneling under. When our picture window was removed we found a huge ant colony living on the concrete base on which the window frame had rested. Cleaning the colony out, adding a bit of boric acid before putting a new window in seems to have cured that constant invasion by the tiny looters who sought sweets.
Flies, 'no-see-ems', crickets, centipedes, and mosquitoes are all equally unwelcome. With great vigilance I keep no food around on which flies can feed and raise their families. I consider all of them unwelcome guests and dispose of them before they invite all their relatives to the party. When humans leave doors open they experience me as a nutty lady. I scream epithets and rage, "Come in or stay out, but shut the *@+* door." If I see either a fly or mosquito in the house, nothing else gets done until it is gone. When I learned that the reason mosquitoes stay on the wall after biting you is to pee out the water of your blood so they can fly, I am even more determined not only not to be a transfusion vehicle but to prevent my walls being used as their toilet.
I have long since given up my battle with squirrels for control of bird seed and have just stopped feeding the birds. I never had time to look at them anyway. For some reason the birds are now doing what they have done for centuries before man started to feed them. They clean up around the yard and seem quite happy. The squirrels nest in neighbors' trees and are out of my reach.
The last to comment on are all the things that want to live and feed on my houseplants. I tried to save the lives of many plants for years after someone brought me a gift of mealy bug. The hours spent trying to save them was not useful to the plants and extremely frustrating to me. Eventually I threw out all plants, no matter how sentimentally attached to them I might have been, that were favorites of mealy bugs and providing hotel space to them. I seem finally to have rid the house of them....at least for now.
I'm perfectly happy to live and let live....just not with me or on me!
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