We are up to our necks in life renovations today: Job hunting and generally making ourselves feel human again after our lingering colds and the mournful loss of school. We finally took out our two months worth of recycling, and I cleaned out the storage closet.
General cleaning will also come. The thingy on our shower that controls the water switch from bath faucet to shower head is busted, so we have to call in a plumber, and we don’t want him to see how we live, so we are cleaning wherever he may go or look, and this is also a good shot at silverfish decimation.
Now, as far as silverfish are concerned, the problem seems under control with daily baseboard vacuuming and a “shoot on sight” policy, however, I am more inclined towards total annihilation.
A few months ago this side of my character would have sickened me, but I feel no remorse for them now. Well, ok, maybe a little remorse. But no mercy whatsoever.
So the week or so before we got ill we bought this super bug spray that keeps on killing for weeks, with an intent to blow these things into oblivion with our superior chemical warfare. Then we got chest colds, and, while a part of me wondered if maybe Raid isn’t the answer to killing respiratory disease, we decided our lungs weren’t up to the task, so we were forced to delay the assault.
Today, however, carpet bombing of the enemy territory has begun.
The entire floor surface of the storage closet (the corner of the house to which the beasts have retreated in the face of our offensive tactics) has been slicked with bug-killing-goodness, and I am trying not to think of the victims’ screams and the lingering death it will bring them every time they crawl over it to make futile attempts to save the dead and dying (which is a romantic way of saying they will scurry over the surfaces to cannibalize their dead bug-fellows).
But what really distresses me is how this new Raid is different from the old industrial nasty my mum used to use when we were kids… This stuff is floral scented, and my house hangs with the morbid smell of lilac-perfumed silverfish death.
It seems wrong to bring about the unnatural end of creatures to the tune of flowers.
I am disturbed, but if I can be rid of the colony, I am sure I will recover from the indignities with which war has burdened me. What I do, I do for my country, my sanity, and my kitchen floor’s sanitation. And, more importantly, for my book bindings.
Viva la Raid! Death to tyrants and to silverfish!
Eat my Lilacs of Death!
2 comments:
I never seem to see silver fish these days and I don't know whether it is down to my super cleanliness or (more likely) that my eyesight isn't what it was.
They tell me that that is the curse of silverfish.
If you live in an apartment building, it doesn't matter how clean you are, because they live in the pipe beds, and can go without food for a year.
And they are awfully hard to spot.
Yuck.
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