Something has really been bugging me

I like to write when I’m inspired. And I just had a big win that totally inspired me, so…

Living in the south, with our hot and humid climate, bugs are a very common occurrence. There are large ones, small ones, interesting ones, pesky ones, biting ones, stinging ones, and just about every bug you can imagine. Some I’ve never seen before. It is a real education living in the Ozarks. Most don’t bother me, but I really don’t want to share a living space with them.

A termite inspection just a few months ago was negative.

And, with five cats that live indoors and one that lives inside but likes to go outside, I have battled more than my share of fleas and ticks.

A couple years ago, fleas were a big problem. We still had carpeting and I was wearing out the rug scrubber in an effort to be rid of those pesky fleas. I refused to put poison on my cats, so I flea combed them often, and finally dusted them with diatomaceous earth. I sprayed inside the house with an essential oil-based spray. I haven’t had a problem since.

Now, I use diatomaceous earth around and even on the front porch.

What bugged me more recently was just the other day when I noticed bugs had invaded my stove.

To be more precise, there was some kind of winged thing inside the top portion of my electric stove that houses the clock. I banged on the top of the stove until I didn’t see it anymore. Then, one day I looked and there were a couple of them in there. “That isn’t good,” I thought.

I pondered the solution to this problem, not really wanting to have to pull out the stove and disassemble it. In my experience, that kind of thing rarely turns out well. I wasn’t even sure if I could do that myself, so I kept thinking about what to do.

What I settled on was to use the electric stove’s self-cleaning oven feature to either fry the unwanted freeloaders or at the very least, chase them away. The stove gets really hot, and it has just gotten cold outside, so this was a good time to turn it on. I figured I could always do the cleanup afterwards.

The deed was done and I am happy to report there are no more bugs in my stove clock.

When I got up this morning, having to change the clocks back an hour to mark the end of daylight saving time, I had contemplated taking the stove away from the wall and cleaning behind it. I found that wasn’t necessary. I took out the drawer on the bottom where I store some pots and pans. It gave me easy access to the floor, all the way to the wall. I vacuumed the entire area and applied diatomaceous earth near the baseboard. That should take care of the bug problem.

This reminds me of another weird bug experience.

There was the time when fruit flies seemingly invaded the ice maker in the refrigerator. Apparently, this is not uncommon, according to all that I’ve read on Google.

I never imagined such a thing. Every time I would get something to drink, I had to dump the first glass of ice and start over. I always had to inspect my glass to make sure there was nothing floating in it. This was really starting to bug me.

I realized that my problem was that I was cleaning with vinegar. I poured it down the drain to keep things running smoothly. Apparently that is where fruit flies like to spend their time when they aren’t munching on exposed fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table. I also cleaned the refrigerator and attempted to kill any bugs I saw with vinegar.

Thanks to Google, I learned that fruit flies are attracted to vinegar.

So, I used soap and water and Q-tips to clean the ice dispenser area. Finally, I sprayed with a little peppermint essential oil. No more bugs.

From what I’ve read, this is not an uncommon problem either. I was lucky. At least I didn’t have larvae in the ice maker.

The bottom line for me is to keep things as clean as possible and always stay vigilant. I try to never use poison in my house. I never want to use products that will harm people and/or pets.