Y'all know how I feel about bugs. I believe my fear and loathing of them has been well-established. The bugs and I reached an understanding last year: if they'd just leave me alone, I wouldn't kill 'em. Seems reasonable to me. But lately, they've been reneging on their end of the deal. A week or so ago, one of my friends said, "I never noticed that mole on the back of your neck before." On closer inspection, it proved to be a tick. Imbedded. A couple of days after that when I was washing my hair, I felt a little bump on my scalp. Another tick. And just the day before yesterday, what I thought was a little clod of dirt between my toes (I'd been walking through the yard in flip-flops) was—guess what?—another bleeping tick! But that's not even the worst. Oh, no. Wednesday afternoon I saw a good-sized spider hiding between the toaster and the kitchen wall, and when I flipped on the puck lights and grabbed a rolled-up newspaper to whack it I noticed the characteristic fiddle on its back. A brown recluse. And today—oh, Lordy, today was the absolute limit. Today when I snatched down my uniform shirt from its peg on the bathroom wall, another brown recluse fell out. Yikes!
So it's on. The bugs must die. The question is, how do I kill the bad bugs without killing all the good bugs along with 'em? I don't want to kill all the butterflies and honeybees and harmless garden spiders and ladybugs just to annihilate a few ticks and poisonous spiders. Do I just constantly carry around the Weekly Shopper and some tweezers to deal with the darn things as they come along? Any ideas?