Winter died about 2 months ago and spring has waged her war on the integrity of my home about as long.
The first solid day of spring hits and I feel relief. Finally the sun is on my skin again. I can be outside without wrapping myself in layers. Cold is always just around the corner in this tepid time, but you get about a week’s worth of perfect days before nature explodes.
First is the pollen. Flowers start blooming and I am crying. I open my windows because the air is finally nice. It’s too cool for a/c, and too warm to keep the windows closed. A fine layer of pollen enters my space. I refuse to close my windows. I refuse to drive with my windows up. I have facial hair I grew during winter. I shave at first as the flesh swells beneath it. My bangs gather allergens and fall into my eyes. I cry and itch. Hives appear. This is normal. It’s fine. This year I refused to take antihistamines for the first month just to see if I could withstand the onslaught. I could until I started drinking beer. Beer seems to exacerbate allergies. I broke and took the meds.
This is all fine. These are skirmishes. Nature is preparing me, and how I respond now will emotionally prime me for the next part. The invasion.
February, I’ll find one then two errant ants. I kill them ruthlessly. Ants are not to be tolerated in my environment. Individually, they’re soulless, neurons of a giant cluster, reaching out with pheromones and tenacity. I hate them. They’re the species that will inherit the earth when we leave our mother planet’s desiccated husk for the stars. Ants, the roaches, and the anarchoprimitaves. I’ll make them wait. Kill all those in your space.
Not that it solves anything long term. I have time-tested solutions for ants, cheap and effective. I don’t get fruit flies. The eventual constant is the spider. Where ants are roving bands of barbarians, spiders are squatters. They start shortly after the ants, but you never notice all of them. Ants wander erratically through your home in an invasive quest for food. They are easy to find and murder with shoe and trap. Spiders hang out in your corners. They move in when you’re not looking, hang out in inconvenient spots, and drop the corpses of their meals on the floor beneath them. I avoid killing a good number of spiders out of the raw inconvenience of doing so.
By mid-April I have an ecosystem living inside my house. There is a hierarchy of spiders holding court in my corners. Without thinking, I’ve developed a working relationship with this little civilization. I kill the ones that are too big, prune the smaller populations. There are certain spiders in strategic spots I leave alone entirely. These spiders I develop a relationship with and mourn their passing. When I see an egg sac, I light it on fire. This is my summer bonsai.
The beetles, the ants, the flies all come and go, but the spiders hang with me until the seasons change. I sweep out this crop as autumn grips and I settle in, pleased at my 4 months of buglessness. But they always return. We’re waiting for each other.
