You Are Not Alone

Not by any stretch of the imagination. As a Peace Corps volunteer, you may not live with another human being but you definitely do not live alone. Let’s breakdown some common housemates and my relationship with them:

Ants – First mentioned because they are most common and appear completely un-deterrable. According to Webster’s 12^th Edition* ants are, “Small but relatively strong, organized little bastards that make colonies in the corners of you house.” Relationship: they infiltrate my food and bite my feet and I occasionally commit Antlocausts with a can of Off. But otherwise we live in peace.

Roaches – I hate them. In my first host family, there were cockroaches in my bed (they were spawning in my mattress pad), which permanently guaranteed my roach-loathing. Thankfully, there are no nests in my current house, which means there are few cockroaches and I maintain a crumb-free house to keep it that way.

Roach sightings always end with a sandal and a squish.  I take morbid pleasure in leaving the roach carcass out and later watching ants dismantle it and carry it under (this is part of my shaky peace accord with the ants).

Frogs – Worthless. These little dudes seem to mostly hang out in corners and hope I don’t notice them. I do. Sometimes I let them stay, because they eat insects and just look so pathetic. However, most of the time, I just throw them out.

Spiders – Also bug eaters, my policy is to leave spiders, unless their web is in my way or they’re big, hairy…

Tarantulas! – Kill at will. Did you know they shrivel up when they die?

Scorpions – Ditto. Dispose of carefully.

Bats – Any frequent reader of this blog knows how I feel about bats. They’re sky rats. They wake me up flapping around and poop on my floor and for that we are permanently at war. Poisoned bananas have become a near permanent fixture in my house and I’ve logged two blunt force murders.

Mice – Poop everywhere and are capable of getting into bags of food, which is why everything is in Tupperware and why there are pink pellets on the floor. My buddy in Honduras says a three foot snake has helped him with his rat problem; I thought about getting one then realized I would be voluntarily introducing a three foot snake into my home. I’m not that desperate. Not yet.

Moths – Spend most of their time flying into candles – they’re more useless than frogs.

The Bug I Just Smacked While Writing This – There are many mysterious insects that make guest appearances, usually in the form of a dive-bomb directly into my face. Many meet the same fate as the moths and others meet the back of my hand (“Nice to meet you, lovely day we’re having…” SMACK).

My favorite is one I’ve dubbed the Helicopter Beetle because when it comes into the house, it sounds like a helicopter, only louder. It will come in and bang into the zinc roof about 67 times before dive-bombing directly into the ground and dying. Every time. I don’t know if this is some kind of death ritual or if I just attract suicidal beetles; either way, it’s perplexingly entertaining.

So I coexist with my creatures and have relationships ranging from neutral to hostile, to hostile with a psychotic fury (See: roaches). But the important thing is that I do co-exist. And by the way, any hippy that preaches “co-existing with nature” should try this for a few weeks and then get back to me.

*Not really.