Creeeeepy Crawlies

This blog post is not for those with queasy stomachs. If you are squirmy about bugs, stop reading now. Go to some other nice, peaceful blog that makes you feel good. Don't say I didn't warn you.


Back in the early days of our marriage, my husband and I visited his parents when they lived on the Georgian Bay. I remarked on an unusual insect there that I had never seen in my life. It intrigued me. It was called an earwig. Strange name....I mean, doesn't it paint a picture in your head?












We must have brought two of them back with us unawares to infest our neck of the woods.

They are now everywhere at our house, starting in about July until frost. If you have them at your house you know what I mean. Pick up anything outside.....a pot....a garbage can....a garden hose....a chair...a rock. Doesn't matter what. If you lift up something outside, there will be earwigs beneath it that scatter when the light hits them. Bring some cut flowers into the house and earwigs will fall out from beneath the petals. They chew stuff. And they like it dark and moist. We've had two rainy summers in a row. Not good.

I'm not sure what eats them. I've invested in all these birds around us. If the birds are eating them, they aren't eating enough of them. If toads or snakes eat them, I'll take about a hundred of each please.


Oh, I know all the ways to knock down their numbers. Like, put out rolled up newspapers or a portion of a garden hose to capture them, and then drown them in soapy water in the morning. Sorry, no time for that - not till I'm retired.


But there's this other nagging problem with them. They're not content to stay outside. We seem to have a 'leaky' house because each summer they begin to pay us a visit...in the kitchen, the bathroom, the basement, and the odd one in the bedrooms.


Back when my daughter was much younger, we had an infestation of earwigs in her bedroom. I'll spare you the details of how they got in - we did figure it out and resolve it. But imagine this little girl feeling things crawling on her....turning on the light, and literally seeing the room alive and moving. Every night after dark....earwigs on the walls, ceilings, floor. Behind the posters and pictures on the walls....under the chair rail....coming out from beneath the baseboards. Everywhere. It's a wonder she didn't have nightmares. Obviously, we didn't let her sleep in there anymore (as if she could) until we tackled where they were getting in the house.


We are no longer infested with them. But if I get up in the night and turn on a light in the bathroom or kitchen, there will always be one or two....or three...that were in transit until the light came on. They freeze and look at you and wait. When they see you move, they try to scurry under something. Their little bodies crunch in the kleenex but you're still not sure they're dead until they go down the toilet...and even then....who knows if they come back? You've heard of gathering at the water cooler? These creatures gather under ours in the kitchen where there's a little moisture. The absolute worst place I have found the odd one is on the flexible trim lining the door of our fridge!


Okay, now that you're never going to visit our house in the summer (in the winter we have flying moths from the bird seed)....perhaps you will implore RAID to bring back the earwig traps they used to produce and have now done away with. They used to work really well. I have some Lee Valley reuseable traps in which you put oil and other stuff, but the earwigs just never go inside them.


Now, I know I'm just whining. I've experienced tropical climates living with everything from tarantulas to chamelions to snakes inside. But I live in suburbia and don't expect to feel like I'm at the cottage or camping.

Even so, I would still rather have earwigs then large ants in my house. Ants are just too intelligent for me. I lived with them at my parents' house when they had an ant nest below the rafters of the house. Every time I entered a room, my eyes would scan the ceilings, walls, and floors. What a feeling to run your hand through your hair and have a large, squishy, wriggling ant between your fingers, or pouring syrup on your pancakes only to find ants swimming in the syrup (I kid you not). But those ants would never die. No matter how hard you whacked them or squished them or drowned them. If only I'd known back then that some of them are allergic to nuts - I would have left out peanut butter traps - because you will notice on the RAID ant traps, they are clearly marked, "may contain nuts". I told you ants were intelligent - they can read. (And how intelligent of us to make the ants aware that the poison that can kill them, may contain nuts that could kill them).


Had enough of this talk? I will leave you then and get some cotton balls for my ears before I go to bed. Whaaaat? EAR wigs. Crawl into dark and moist places. Not sure what they like chewing, but I know I need to keep all of the brains I have, little though they may be (as evidenced by this blog post).