Unfortunately, there are also other less endearing signs that spring has arrived: an abundance of insects show up too. This morning alone, I saw three spiders, and my dog Bailey has been biting at flies all week. I even saw a wooly bear caterpillar in the driveway the other day.
While I understand that bugs have their purpose, I prefer that they experience that purpose somewhere that’s far away from me.
I work with a woman who will pick up and relocate the spiders that we find in our office. I can’t believe that she does this. I tease that she gives them tea and cookies and fluffs their little spider pillows. She even does this with those extra-macho wolf spiders that make me hyperventilate just thinking about them.
She is not at all like me. If I encounter a spider, I will scream like a little girl, and then try my best to convince someone else to kill it for me. If there’s no one around, I’ll do the deed myself just so I know that it won’t jump out later and surprise me, as spiders love to do. Of course, I then spend the rest of the day shuddering over my eight-legged encounter.
This morning, I was in the shower, shampooing, when I felt something hard and odd among the strands of my hair. Almost immediately, I smelled the tell-tale odor: it was a stinkbug. Even though I was minding my own business, I somehow had a nasty, awful stinkbug in my hair.
I grabbed the bug out of my soapy hair and flung it toward the floor of the shower, but because I can’t see anything without my glasses, I couldn’t actually see where it landed. I used the hand-held shower sprayer to hopefully flush the darn thing down the drain.
By this time, my hair, my body, and the entire bathroom reeked of stinkbug. I knew I’d have to rinse
my hair and re-shampoo it in order to remove the odor.
As I reapplied the shampoo, I heard a buzzing sound and then felt something hit my leg. Of course, I couldn’t actually see where it went because A) I still didn’t have my glasses on, and B) my eyes were full of water and shampoo. It didn’t take much to conclude that the stinkbug either didn’t go down the drain, or he’d brought along a friend. Neither scenario was appealing when all I wanted to do was wash-off the stink bug odor and finish my shower ALONE.
I quickly wiped my eyes and jumped out of the shower so that I could find the stinkbug. I grabbed my glasses, but the steam of the shower and the steady stream of water I’d neglected to turn off meant that I still couldn’t see anything.
Shampoo slid down my face and into my eyes. I took off my glasses and rinsed them. I felt around for the faucet and turned off the water as I grabbed a towel to wipe my eyes. I dried the lenses of my
glasses with the towel and was finally able to see the entire area of the shower.
That sneaky, smelly, no-good stinkbug was nowhere to be found.
Although I didn’t know where my nemesis had gone, I had to do something about the shampoo dripping from my head and hair that smelled like a stinkbug frat party. I took my glasses off and stepped back into the shower.
I rinsed the shampoo and grabbed the bottle of hair conditioner. As I attempted to open the bottle, I was horrified to discover that the stinkbug was sitting on top of the cap.
I threw the conditioner bottle onto the floor of the shower and immediately aimed the shower sprayer at it. I wasn’t about to let that stinkbug escape again. I turned the water on full force, desperate to wash that stupid bug and its stench down the drain for good.
After a few minutes, I felt confident that the stinkbug had gone to a better place – or at least wherever it is that dead bugs go - and continued with my shower.
I applied conditioner to my hair and tried to hang the hand-held shower sprayer back in place. I couldn’t really see what I was doing, but I felt around to put the sprayer into its holder. As if my shower hadn’t already been enough of an ordeal, the sprayer fell down and hit me squarely on the head.
Who knew that a shower could be so eventful? After this one, I’m not sure which I need more: pest control or laser eye surgery.
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