I don’t know what you do about pests in your house – insects and rodents, that is, not the cats and dogs – but the approach we take to keeping the place as bug-free as we can get it is remarkably different than it was a few decades ago when I was growing up on the farm.
Admittedly, on a farm, in those days, in any case, the numbers of potential intruders seemed to be in great supply. It was anybody’s guess whether we were raising cattle or flies. Had there been a market for the flies, we’d have had a fancy swimming pool in the backyard in no time.
Mice, too, had a fondness for the rural life, though we had a special way of dealing with them. Traps in the house, of course, but hungry cats in the yards and barn. I remember doing a census one day and announcing the results: We had 17 cats living on our property, including one with three legs, who was our best mouser. (A short time later, distemper set in and before too long we had no cats at all and had to go to the neighbours to get a couple to start the ball rolling again.)
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It seems hard for me to believe now, but in that big farm kitchen of ours way back then we sat in the midst of chemical pesticides while we ate our supper and thought nothing of it. When the insects got a few too many too handle, out would come a can of a liquid that would “kill bugs dead” and copious amounts of it would be sprayed throughout the rooms. And I do mean copious. I can still remember the tingling in my nose and even the tart taste on my tongue of the murderous material. We paid no particular attention to it; we were just happy it worked so well. It was our best friend.
In summer, our kitchen/dining/living room was also decorated in a lovely way by long, brown-yellow fly stickers that were fastened to the ceilings with a tack. They came in little, green cylinders which, when the cap was flipped, pulled out into a fly’s worst nightmare. Fly after ill-fated fly would slam their way into the gooey substance on the stickers from which there was no return. However, they didn’t die right away so this left us to enjoy their death throe buzzings, sometimes for hours. Not to make us sound like the Beverly Hillbillies, but as I remember it, we sat at the table eating our meals while not too far away, unhappy flies on stickers were buzzing out their last, sorrowful buzzes.
West windows in the house, it seemed, were to cluster flies in the fall what the beach is to teenagers all summer. They did their slow dance on the sills and glass till a vacuum cleaner sent them on to a better place (better for us, in any case).
And then there were the bats. Don’t get me started on the bats. I remember one night, lying in bed reading a book and watching as one crawled its way nonchalantly up my dresser. A predictable commotion followed. I forget what the end result was, though I’m still here; the bat is not.
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So, here, in 2005, what does the farmboy-turned-city-slicker do to keep our home livable? To begin with, we certainly don’t have the problems we did on the farm, so there is no true comparison. Something about the absence of livestock living in the backyard. But I deal with those pests that do insist on invading our privacy in ways that I’m sure would shock my forebears. After spending so many years killing things, I’ve sort of lost my appetite for murder. So, if you’re a fly, my home is good place to hang out. I have a fly swatter, it’s true, but it hasn’t been brought down from its hook in the garage in a long time (at least, not by me). Instead, I cup my hand, catch the little creatures and throw them outside. Part of that approach is also simply practical: Swatting usually results in blood and guts on the wall or table.
Creepy crawlies, too, get a fairly easy time of it in my home. I usually bundle them up in a tissue, and throw the whole works out a window. Even the ever-disgusting centipedes. Earwigs, I’m ashamed to say, are about the only things that still rate pretty low on my compassion meter and l confess they don’t have it as good as the spiders and flies.
If earwig stickers were sold in the stores, they’d be hanging from our ceilings like streamers at a kid’s birthday party.
©2005 Jim Hagarty
