"I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!"
So I just spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out if I'd blogged about this friend I had last spring, to whom I referred as My Roommate Who Doesn't Live Here, in hopes that I wouldn't have type it all now. Alas, my blogging those months was less than thorough.
Anyway, at an Easter conference, I met this American guy who had just arrived and was here for a couple of months to improve his French and hopefully do some volunteer work (clearly, he didn't know much about the French) and as he was looking for a place and was staying in a hostel a few blocks from my place, he ended up hanging out at my place to use my computer while I was gone teaching, and then when he found a place out in the suburbs he would still hang out here a lot, and by the end of his two months here, he was my roommate who didn't live here.
At the beginning of May, he went on a trip with his family to Egypt and Israel. Since he was moving back to the States right after this trip, he brought over everything he wasn't taking to store for the couple of weeks while he was gone. When he got back, he came over to pick up his stuff and repack it all, and left a bunch of stuff with me that wasn't worth hauling back after being thrashed in the Middle East. At the time, I still hadn't found a French version of Goodwill/Salvation Army/DI, so I just left the stuff in the bags he'd put them in and tossed them in the only storage place I have: under my bed. And proceeded to not worry about it, at all.
And then, last fall, prior to
Last Fall's Disappointment's trip over here I was doing the usual monster cleaning you do before a guy you're seeing comes to visit. As a result, I discovered a ton of these little bugs, and bug carcasses, and so freaked out. They'd eaten little holes into the other clothes I had down there with his stuff, and after chucking everything and praying that this infestation really did come, as it appeared, from those shoes in the ripped bag, I employed an unreasonable amount of chemicals hoping to kill any leftover larvae or eggs or whatever, so that my Egyptian infestation wouldn't repeat itself. Also, I didn't really think brown ovoid insects with white pus-like guts would add to the romance of the weekend.
Wellllll, a couple of weeks ago I started finding the same bugs. I think. At least, they look the same, although they're smaller and exude clear pus-like guts when squished, rather than white. I didn't take any pictures before, so I can't be sure, but my guess is that they're the same. I've only found half a dozen or so, so it's not like
Vincent D'Onofrio is living under my bed or anything, but I still went through the search-and-destroy ritual, although I found nothing visible. And yet, today, I found another bug sitting all by itself in the middle of my bed. You know, I'm not terribly familiar with native fauna here; maybe they're coming in through the windows or something, or maybe they're wafting in on the Neighbor Stench.
I realize that the picture is more of my hand and less of the bug (you try snapping a good shot as the stupid thing is walking around, while making sure it doesn't get away because its death is imminent), but I just figured that if I have to be creeped out by tiny bugs, I ought to share.
On the bright side, if that whole moving to Africa next year pans out, this is just premature acclimation, right?
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