Ark of Vermin

As the monsoon rains come, so too do the floods. And with every self-respecting flood there should be an ark. And there is - it is the vermin ark that is my home. This is not a criticism of my Auntie's housekeeping - she runs a respectably tight ship. But yet...they come. Two by two by two, by two.

It's not of plague magnitude. Just the slow steady trickle of time tested Chinese water torture. We are graced with a different nocturnal guest a night. I suspect they run rotations.

We have a mouse family, previously living in a box on our bureau now refugeed somewhere behind the furniture (one of which cheekily gnawed a chunk out of my school planner).

The ants - the big black ones and their small red cousins; the latter prefer running in and out of my sandals and getting smooshed between my toes.

The roaches of mammoth size and the flying ones (which Auntie professes are not true roaches, but frankly I don't see what the appreciable difference is except that one sort can fly into my ears and the other kind would have to crawl - roaches being known to get trapped, chittering, in those aural crevices during the night).

The dot-like bugs that scurry over the pages of our books as we read.

The tarantula sized spider (although not a true tarantula) behind our bed (now deceased).

There was the scorpion under the table we eat at (also deceased).

The moths - but I kind of like them.

The lizards - likewise picturesque.

Something that leaves tiny brown poop pellets about the size of the eye of a needle around the bed.

The creature that digs in the wall and faithfully leaves a tidy pile of dirt and wall bits next to its hole every morning.

There is a snail who lives in the damp of the bathroom, as well as a terracotta bowl of worms. The worms have a legitimate presence, though, as they are fed to Uncle's fish every night.

And finally. My own personal nemesis - the mosquitoes. I have been sporting the equivalent of a braille encyclopedia upon the parchment of my tender skin for several months now. A memorable few weeks tallied 26 mosquitoe bites on my left foot alone. I take swigs of benadryl cough syrup like a bad vodka habit. Interestingly, the diphenhydramine element acts as a quick and glorious antihistmene.
Who knew?

But my point. My point is that I am living smack dab in the ketchup dish of an enormous entomological buffet.

...and that I am itchy.


The cute, baby-cradle mosquito net on sale at a local department store.

My roommate and our own cave-like mosquito net.

The mammoth roaches.

***And yes, we have been proactive in our trials. We have a net, roach chalk, roach balls, the plug-in kind of mosquitoe repellent, the burning kind of mosquitoe repellent, deet, bleach, and some sort of chemical that uncle pumps around in the corners of the room. I sleep with my socks up over my pajama bottoms, huddled in a sleep sack up to my ears.

Ah summer vacation.