Insectisitis

Is anyone missing any bugs around their house? We seem to have an over abundance of little critters crawling around lately. And I don't like it at all. They give me the creeps. Bugs that are included in this category of creepiness are spiders, flies, big carpenter ants, grasshoppers, beetles, fuzzy caterpillars, and moths. I don't like finding them and I really don't like killing them especially the crunchy ones with shells.

At the beginning of our marriage, I made it very clear that "it was the man's job to kill bugs". My husband was and is usually agreeable to my somewhat bizarre requests so he didn't see a problem with fulfilling this request. I simply had to just shreek his name and point in the direction of the bug and he was there armed with a shoe or some kleenex or in some instances he would just use his hand to stop the intruder before it could further damage our house! He is my hero.

When our children came along, I realized that my husband would not always be around to do the bug killing so I was going to have to learn how. It was horribly difficult at first but after a few hundred attempts, I became more confident and soon was swatting things with only minor creep-out feelings. If a bug got even remotely close to my children, I had no problem smashing it's body against the wall because there would be no way that a bug would endanger my precious child! It was like the flight or fight option instinctually took over and the bug would never win. I obviously choose the "fight" option in high stress situations and let me tell you, carpenter ants still cause me a high amount of stress.

Today, I realized that I have not taught my son to be especially brave in "bug situations". It must be the lack of good modeling. The children were downstairs playing a video game and I was cooking for the week. I suddenly heard Nate yell, "Mom, come down here, we have a spider on the ceiling." I quickly ran across the kitchen to the sink, plunged my hands into the dishwater and yelled, "Nate, you are going to have to take care of it...my hands are wet". A few seconds later, I realized that Nate was in the fight mode. He must have wanted to protect his sister from the evil spider! He was running towards his upstairs bedroom and quickly returned with a nerf dart gun in hand and as he was running back downstairs he yelled, "Mom, don't worry, I am going to take care of this spider. I am going to shoot him off the ceiling." So, here my friends is my son, the spider shooter, in full action:

Since he has excellent aim, he shot the spider right off the ceiling on the first try and it fell behind the entertainment center. We are quite certain that it is not dead. Nate left his dart gun downstairs on top of that entertainment center just in case. Never a dull moment in this house! Happy Buggy Spring!