Bug Off!

When we first got married and my husband came home from kollel to find a blue plastic cup face down on the kitchen floor, he knew he was in for a job. UGH. Over the years, our bug-fighting technique hasn’t advanced much. The Freedom Tower has been built, the Internet-age has dawned, we’ve been through five presidents — and we still resort to catching bugs in cups and gingerly conveying them outside.

The way I see it, bugs fall into three broad categories. Group 1 is the rarely seen, (thank goodness) awful ones. These raise a RED alert, requiring immediate removal at all costs, vacuuming being the weapon of choice. (And let the vacuum run for five minutes afterwards.) Examples include:

1. One million legs and as awful as they come aka centipedes, and
2. Ginormous water bugs, which may be mistaken for mice due to their size and speed.

Group 2 are the moderately gross bugs. I don’t know their scientific names, but we’ve assigned our own. For instance:

1. Bally (rhymes with crawly) bugs — the ones that live under rocks — So what are they doing in my living room? and
2. Bloop-Bloop Bugs — monstrous mosquito-like flies that are as delicate as air and fly in a bloop-bloop motion; hence the name.

Bugs in this middle category raise a YELLOW alert. Someone (read Mom) needs to “take care” of it ASAP. But until she does, it may be left to live under a cup for a few minutes.