Deep dark confession of a former scout: I do not like bugs. At all. And there was nothing less amusing than finding myself face-to-face with an entire colony (cluster? Herd? I don’t know!) of them ganged up around the ceiling light in my room just last night.
But as I grabbed my makeshift Dollarama Swiffer to commit bug-icide, it got me thinking—what is the best technique to get rid of these winged pests? Is it my mom’s slipper? That five-year-old bug spray in my closet? My bare hands? Or rather, would it be better to channel my inner Snow White and talk them out of invading my space?
Below, I provide my judgments of people who use each method—and for legal purposes, this is nothing more than a joke.
- Your mom’s slipper
A safe choice. No judgement here. Gets the job done, and bonus points if you throw the slipper at the ceiling to hit a bug—that is truly an extreme sport.
- Bug spray
If you use bug spray to get rid of house bugs, you’re obsessed with rules and probably spend 80 percent of the time making sure that the species of the bug you’re attacking matches the one on the spray can’s label. Just use the nearest book or shoe like the rest of us—the bug would’ve died of boredom by the time you finished reading the specifications, anyway. Then again, maybe that’s been your killing strategy all along, you closeted pacifist. Death by boredom just doesn’t seem as thrilling of a technique as chasing the bug around the room and sporting a couple of bruises, though.
- Your bare hands (or your feet, for bonus points)
Honestly, I respect you. But I’m also terrified of you. You were the one your family called to deal with household pests, because you have absolutely no fear. None. Bonus points if you’ve ever punched a cockroach, because, as a former scout, I’ve seen someone do it, and it is not for the faint of heart…
- Diplomacy
If you try to sweet-talk a fly out of your room, you were DEFINITELY a Model UN kid in high school and believed that you had UN speaker-level charisma whenever you talked to people. Unless you happen to be a young animal linguist princess inhabiting the home of seven dwarfs in the middle of a forest, just grab a broom and call it a day.
- The box
You’re sweet and probably leave food outside your window to feed cold birds in the winter. I admire the #livelovenature efforts, but if it weren’t for your decision to kindly, gently, sweetly place a wasp in a box to release back into nature, I would not have had to spend fifteen minutes of my precious time trying to muster up the courage to kill it as it buzzed around the light in my room.
In other words, thank God fall is approaching and the wasps and flies are starting to disappear as summer’s heat starts to fade. I’ll probably need to learn to deal with spiders in December, though. I now see why everyone on Game of Thrones was so afraid of winter coming.