warm fuzzies

originally posted June 23, 2008


I have some gruesome news not for the faint of heart: There are caterpillars in our bathroom. Dr. BS discovered three (!) the other day, all at once. Three! In the bathroom! ALL AT ONCE. One was floating around in the toilet, expired, one was found smushed under the bathroom rug, and one was CRAWLING AROUND RIGHT THERE OUT IN THE OPEN. And now this morning he found another one!

This is not good. I have an aversion to insects. Okay, not really an aversion, more of an irrational terror with regard to. I can tolerate ants in small numbers, and ladybugs are okay, but anything beyond that and I become a hot, sweaty mess. If my children are about I will try to appear calm and such, because one of my jobs as a mother is to prevent my assorted neuroses from becoming their assorted neuroses. However, if they are not around (as in, not directly in front of me), I will express open panic by way of frantic shrieks to the Brain Scientist or warbled, muted wails as I run, hand clasped over my mouth, to the place in the house that is furthest from the scene of the intrusion. Sometimes I will stand on my bed so that I can appraise the threat of an insect stampede. Sometimes I will do so while covering my ears with my hands, so as to protect them from potential entry by insects. EEEEEEEEEEEEE. I can barely type this.

Yesterday I was in a different bathroom, as I can no longer enter the Caterpillar Cave of Terror, for obvious reasons, and was startled by a cricket that leapt out at me from the shower curtain in a very menacing way. A cricket. I hate crickets. I try to imagine them wearing tiny spectacles and spats and carrying little canes and stuff but it JUST DOESN'T WORK. And because there was no three-year-old in the immediate vicinity to inspire me to police my behavior I called urgently (or perhaps screamed), Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist! And he came running in, totally disgusted when he discovered the source of my urgent call, not because he finds crickets offensive, but rather because he finds me and my irrational fear offensive. I thought you cut off your hand, he said. There's a cricket! I whispered in the horrified way of one who has just found a severed head. And then the Brain Scientists senior and junior went merrily about wrangling the cricket and escorting it outside, all the while enjoying a fun father-son moment as it tickled their hands and attempted to escape and crawled on my son's arm, covering him with CRICKET COOTIES. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

So anyway, there seems to be a caterpillar problem. I would say infestation, because four (!) seems like A LOT of caterpillars for one tiny room, but I'm afraid that some divine power will set my ass straight by teaching me about what truly constitutes an infestation. I fear I would not survive that.

Dr. BS has three theories as to how the caterpillars are getting into the bathroom, all of which stem from an overarching theory that the caterpillars are attempting to escape the ridiculous heat of Satan's Nethers:

1) They have come up through the drain, as we have not run the shower in this bathroom for some time.

2) They have come in on the cat, who hangs out in the bathroom. Early this morning I mis-remembered this theory, thinking that the BS had told me that they might have come in on him. This was a terrible thought to have as I lay next to him in bed – that the Brain Scientist was, unbeknownst to me, the Pied Piper of Caterpillars.

And finally, the most horrifying theory of all:

3) They fell from the bathroom fan over the toilet.

From the bathroom fan. Over the toilet.

CATERPILLARS falling from the bathroom fan over the toilet.

CATERPILLARS FALLING FROM THE SKY! ONTO ME! ONTO MY HEAD!! FALLING ONTO MY HEAD WHILE SITTING ON THE TOILET!!! MY HEAD, WHICH IS SUFFICIENTLY NERVOUS ENOUGH ALREADY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! AS INDICATED BY THE FACT THAT MY INSECT ANXIETY ALREADY MOTIVATES ME TO DO A THOUROUGH CHECK OF THE BASE OF THE TOILET REGION PRIOR TO SITTING DOWN IN AN EFFORT TO AVOID BEING SURPRISED BY A POTATO BUG OR MAYBE EVEN GOD FORBID A COCKROACH!!!!! HOLY FUCK!!!!!!

Of course, this has resulted in a great deal of twitchiness on my part, as I am continually experiencing the sensation that something is crawling on me and that things are falling on my head.

Oooooooh, I need a valium.

Fucking caterpillars.