My day starts well. I’ve taken bacon out of the freezer so there is a BLT in my very near future. A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich just happens to be my all time favorite thing to eat as long as there is no mayonnaise on it. I’m strictly a Miracle Whip kind of girl. On my way to the kitchen to fry the bacon, I noticed that my living room ceiling was covered with little black dots. Dots that were moving. Bugs!

I know they aren’t lady bugs, but they are beetles of some sort, and while they seem to thrive in my house, I am convinced that they don’t belong there. A local TV station did a news report on them awhile back. There is some relief in knowing that I am not the only person with this beetle infestation. While being interviewed by the news reporter who thought the “cute, little beetles” were precious, a knowledgeable man from the extension agency recommended gently capturing each beetle and releasing them outside, where they apparently do something good. I tried this approach once, and when I turned my back, the same beetle flew right back in. I recognized her from the tiny black freckle she had on her right butt cheek. I know the following to be true: whatever job the beetles were cultivated for outside, it is one that they don’t care to do. Otherwise, why would they all be in my house? Union bugs, perhaps, on a coffee break?

I hooked up the vacuum cleaner and prepared to do some serious hunting. What should have been a relaxing day, became anything but. I hate being outsmarted by a bug! The first thirty-one were easy. Shlurp! and they were in the sweeper bag. While the victory appeared to be momentarily mine, the smell coming from the sweeper exhaust was definitely eau de beetle. Plus, I’m convinced that they have a secret way out of the sweeper bag. How else can I leave the room and return minutes later to find twenty of the minuscule little pests taunting me from the ceiling? Where do they come from? Is my house listed on a computer bug site called Air Beetle and Bed?

It’s not just the ceiling they have staked as their property. They love the windows, and they mate and multiply in my light fixtures. My weekly chore list (but not necessarily my weekly chore practice) includes sweeping, dusting, and debugging the lights. And a large number of them prefer to walk across the floor. You would think that I’d enjoy ridding myself of them by stomping on them, but, in truth, I can’t quite get myself beyond the thought of little bits of bug guts sticking to my feet and being smeared across my floor. While I can’t voluntarily squash them, I don’t seem to mind picking up their disjointed bodies to toss if I find them already flattened. I really could spend the entire day walking through the house sweeping up these nasty, smelly little creatures. I wish they would stay out of my house!

I find myself snorting when I think about the reporter calling them cute. Cute? Ha! They are cute being flushed down the toilet! Want to go for a swim little fellow? I know that flushing works. They cannot fly back into my house once I’ve watched them go down the hatch. There is a down side to this method of beetle removal, however. After the water department read my water meter, they called to inform me that they were pretty sure I had a leak. I knew this was not the case. The doubled water consumption was testimony to the number of times I had gleefully flushed a hideous, little monster, a pleasure that I’m sure is just a few steps from being abnormal!