Bugs, Bugs and More Bugs

I have to start out this post by saying that I really hate bugs! That being said I have sort of a strange fascination of nature and seeing bugs or other critters, as long as they pose no direct threat to me, mostly meaning, when they are dead.  Take, for instance, the spider pictured below.

I would say this spider would be very scary if it were alive. I mean look at the meat on it's bones! However, when I found it in my room at work it was dead. Even then it was hard for me to get too close and it took me almost a week before I worked up the guts to sweep it up and throw it away.

The next photo is of a daddy long legs that was camped out in a corner of my work room. He didn't really bother me because he just stayed in his corner during the work ours. But I did think it was fascinating that one day I looked over at him and he was feasting on a roly poly. And not only that, but not shown in the picture is that he had 3 other roly poly's on the floor. For other meals? Dessert? One can only speculate. The picture is very blurry because I could not bring myself to get any closer than that to a live specimen.

I'm seriously getting itchy just writing this post and I haven't even gotten to the main part yet. The main part is that John and I became aware that we were living with some bugs, quite a few actually. I am not talking about your spiders that show up once in a while or even those ghastly monster centipedes though I abhor those despicable creatures. We actually still don't know exactly what they are. However we do know what they are not, and that is bed bugs.

A few weeks ago now we had discovered some bugs under our bed in a pull out wood drawer we used for storage of linens. There were only a few but with John's job and all the outbreaks of bed bugs in the news we were certainly leery. We washed the drawer and all the stuff inside and hoped that was the end of it. However, it was not to be. We tore apart our whole bed set and threw out almost everything under the bed. Much of it was infested with these tiny bugs. We vacuumed and cleaned as best we could. We inspected every inch of everything around the bed. Oddly enough there were no bugs on the bed, box spring or frame. So that was a plus. We still weren't sure though. I brought a specimen to work to look at with a magnifier and they looked a little like a bed bug in the early stages. I had a friend look at it who had bed bugs before and he thought it looked similar. That was enough for us. So we were 99% sure we had bed bugs at this point.

Magnified many times. The actual size is like 1-2 mm. Very tiny.

Then I found some bugs in our closet as well. That was the last straw for me. We called our apartment complex to let them know our fears and they said they would send a pest company to take a look. That was last thursday morning when I called. I took a 1/2 day and off on Friday. We had alot of work to do. We inspected every item in our bookcase from pens to paper and bagged in sealed bags. We bagged all our clothes in the closet as well.  Basically everything from our shelves and closets got bagged or thrown out. We vacuumed everything. It was a ton of work and by Saturday I was exhausted.  Plus I wasn't sleeping at all because of the bug situation and wondering if they were coming for me in my sleep.

I will say that through this whole ordeal God had given me great peace. Other than the not sleeping part I was rather calm about everything. I think John and I were both just learning to be resigned to the reality of the situation and the fact that we had little control. We could only do so much. Some good did come of things too. We drew together very well and made a great team. We also got rid of a bunch of stuff and were reminded again of how much unnecessary stuff we own and can do without. I also found a skirt I thought I had lost 2 years ago. That was really exciting and I wore it Sunday.

I think the most frustrating part of this whole ordeal, other than the bugs themselves, is our apartment complex's seemingly lackadaisical approach to this problem. I called thursday morning and was told she would call for pest control and let me know when they could come. No one came and I never received a call. Thursday evening John went to the office and talked to the manager. She said she would send someone the next day that she didn't even know about the problem. I was home all day. No one came. I called and was assured they would come Saturday. Saturday by 11:30. No one. I called and she could not guarantee me they were coming but she would find out and call me. No call, but they did come. He wasn't in our apartment too long, but did a quick inspection. He was 100% sure they weren't bed bugs so we were extremely relieved as you can imagine. He did not know exactly what they were but thought some kind of beetle. I've never seen anything like them before.

So anyway, we celebrated having peace of mind and no bed bugs. Of course that doesn't take away from the fact that we do still have some sort of little creatures that think they are welcome when they most certainly are not. He said he would come back this Wed. to spray. Did not come. We called the pest company and they said they would get back to us. No call. The office called me and the manager didn't even know he came by on Saturday so there is lots of miscommunication. She said someone was going to come by this morning to do an inspection again (I did tell her about saturday but she insisted). So I said fine and left out a note with specimens, etc. I got home from work and no one came. I went to the office to find out why not and was told they already did the inspection saturday (DUH!) and no one would be back to spray til mid next week. Really?!

So now here I sit. In front of me is a giant pile of our stuff in oversized plastic bags. Over a week ago I called to report some bugs and if it was not for our diligent efforts at cleaning and killing bugs every day who knows how bad things would be. I voiced my frustration about our apartment being torn apart and the lady at the office actually told me that I could put all our stuff back. Excuse me? If you had bugs crawling on the walls in your closet, would you put your clothes back in? If your closets were going to be sprayed with some sort of pesticide would you want your clean clothes in the same room? I think not!

So we'll see what happens next week in this continuing saga of the mysterious bugs. In the meantime I will just continue to be grateful that they aren't bed bugs. At least I can sleep with that knowledge, though I am still itchy from all this writing about bugs. Yuck!