Early Days

After moving to our new home I vowed I would not be spending more time outside than absolutely necessary. We had never seen so many disgusting insects and other vermin in our life.

A variety of different lizards scampered gleefully up and down the trees and around the front of the house. Snakes were abundant as well. More spiders than I had seen in all my years of growing up combined, marched with abandon every where spinning their disgusting webs as they went. Walking outside in the fall you had to accept the fact that you would get spider webs in your face or some where on yourself if you didn't watch very carefully where you walked.

There were insects of every shape and size the way it seemed. More kinds than I had known was even possible. Even with a lot of trees in the yard we were never tempted to sit in the shade because we always got insect bites of some sort. But even worse than all the flying buzzing noisy things were the ticks and chiggers that had to be dealt with every day.

Our house had huge windows on three side but only a little portion of them could be opened. They tilted out which was nice to be able to keep them open even when it rained. One evening before we went to bed I closed the windows. The one window seemed a little extra stubborn but I managed to get it closed and locked.

The next morning when I wanted to open it I was horrified to find that I had pinched a big snake into the window. It was thoroughly dead by now after having been squashed like that all night but that didn't keep me from shivering and running to find LV to scrape the remains off the window and get rid of it.

The house seemed like the safest place to be, but even it was plagued with occasional walking sticks, centipedes, and other things. My poor voice box got plenty of exercise as it seemed every time I discovered something crawling on the sink or on a wall I always shrieked even though it hurt and I was determined to make the best of things and learn how to bravely get rid of those unwanted intruders without letting the entire neighborhood know I was terrified again.