{"id":4348,"date":"2010-07-26T12:11:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T17:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2010-07-23T12:28:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T17:28:46","slug":"the-one-with-the-earwigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/07\/26\/the-one-with-the-earwigs\/","title":{"rendered":"The one with the earwigs"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> don’t know about where you live, but in my end of town it has been a crazy summer for earwigs. I have never seen so many of them! And while I am pretty much okay with the usual infestations of ants and even spiders — earwigs? *shudder* I’ve taken to banging my morning paper rather fiercely against the porch wall before allowing it into the house, after more than once leaping up off the couch in a panic as one crawled across me.<\/p>\n

We seem to be getting a lot of them in the house, which I’ve never seen before, and we’re getting them in the office at work, too. The jury is still out on whether they bite or not — I’ve heard it passionately argued both ways — but those pincher thingees on their arse ends are more than enough to put them on my “squish at any cost” list.<\/p>\n

Do earwigs freak you out? You may want to stop reading now. This is my guaranteed-to-make-you-shudder earwig story. Don’t worry, I’ll understand. Come back tomorrow and we’ll be back to the rainbows and unicorns, no hard feelings.<\/p>\n

The other day, I was putting water in the kiddie pool for the boys. They’d been in the pool the day before, and I’d hung their bathing suits on the deck rail to dry. Simon’s had fallen during the night, and was sitting in a heap under the porch swing.<\/p>\n

I was wrestling with the hose, so in my defense, I was preoccupied. If I’d been paying attention, I could have easily seen it coming and averted the whole nasty affair. But I wasn’t.<\/p>\n

I’ve told the boys I’d help them with their bathing suits in a minute, but Simon is excited about playing in the pool, and sees his bathing suit on the deck. He grabs it and brings it into the house.<\/p>\n

(Can you see it coming? It gets worse.)<\/p>\n

Beloved is sitting in one of those little Ikea plastic chairs, fiddling with the printer under the desktop shelf when Simon comes in, leaking a trail of earwigs from his infested bathing suit. He hasn’t yet noticed that his bathing suit is practically moving of its volition, and wants Beloved to help him put it on. In the ingratiating matter of children everywhere, does not simply ask for assistance (oh, the many points at which disaster could have been averted) but instead, to get his father’s attention, tosses his earwig-infested bathing suit onto Beloved’s head, where the earwigs rain down like a biblical plague and scurry every which way into my dining room. <\/p>\n

(I told you it was gross. Imagine it from Beloved’s perspective, with them slipping into his shirt collar and down his back!)<\/p>\n

I was, blissfully, outside, but I heard Beloved’s bellow of dismay and came running. I managed to scoop up a dozen or more, and Beloved caught as many, but he said that at least twice that many got away.<\/p>\n

And now? We keep finding them *everywhere*. In the kitchen, crisped in the lint trap, and one memorable night floating in Beloved’s soda. We’ve moved every piece of heavy furniture on the main floor in our quest to eradicate them.<\/p>\n

Just about anything else would be tolerable, but earwigs? Ick!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know about where you live, but in my end of town it has been a crazy summer for earwigs. I have never seen so many of them! And while I am pretty much okay with the usual infestations of ants and even spiders — earwigs? *shudder* I’ve taken to banging my morning paper … Continue reading “The one with the earwigs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4351,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions\/4351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}