I Live in a Freakin’ Zoo and To Be Honest, I’m Just Not That Into it Anymore

5.14.2010

All of these things happened tonight:

1.the onslaught of golden June bugs. I get dive bombed everywhere and wake up every morning to a house that looks like a battle field, with little beetled bodies scattered across the floor.

2. I flip on the bathroom light to see one of these golden beetles by my hand on the wall, struggling thru some spider web. On the beetle’s back, behind the head, where wing attaches to body, is a little black and gray spider doing something mean looking.

3. a lightning bug flashing away on the floor

4. a beetle the size of a hacky sac, buzzing like a helicopter, crashing full force into and careening off of the walls until I toss it outside.

5. a trio of grasshopper, giant beetle (see #4) and spiked green and black lizard, chillin’ in my bathroom. That’s right, a six inch lizard.

If you’d asked me a week ago if I’d ever had a tarantula, baby scorpions, lightning bug, helicopter beetle or spiky lizard in my house I would have said no. But that was a week ago. Ji says people pay good money to come to Costa Rica and see these animals. Well, I’m gonna pay good money to go to New York and spend the summer away from them.

Scorpion update: I spoke to my landlady today. Turns out she’s very allergic to scorpion stings. The sting site swells and she gets a fever. She says as soon as she sees them she sprays anti-scorpion spray on them and they die immediately. Maybe this is just the excuse I need to start killing these arachnids that I hate so much, instead of carefully capturing them and tossing them outside.