The Bug Chain - Part 2 - The Orient

When I became a military spouse, I knew, without a doubt, that my normal was forever going to be changed.  Moving to weird places, accepting that the military would take a front seat in my marriage, and being an emotional Gumbi so that I could flex with every storm were things that I learned early on that I had to accept in order to thrive.

BUT BUGS?????

Man, was I in for it. I thought the mosquitoes in the Great White North were bad!  That was until we moved to the Orient.  I had never seen anything quite like my insectal adversary in the Orient before that move.  What I learned to live with while in the Orient would have sent me into a panic if they showed up in our home anywhere else.

Roaches.  

I mean HUGE roaches!  These nasty, disgusting, vile, little creatures were often 2 to 2 1/2 inches longs AND fat.  They were everywhere and cocky!  The idea that they came out at night was a lie.  They would nonchalantly waltz across the floor like they owned the place.  After a few months, I decided that I had moved into their home and it wasn't really my own.

To say that my engineer and I were absolutely disgusted with the infestation that we moved into doesn't even touch on the depth of nastiness that we felt concerning our home.  We were embarrassed beyond words concerning these repellant creatures that lived in our home.  I would dream of them at night, only to wake in a panic insistent on pulling all the blankets off the bed and shaking them.  I hated getting up in the night for fear of stepping on something.  House shoes became a must.  These gut wrenchingly foul things made my skin crawl.

We also had massive spiders...Wolf Spiders.  At first, these things were the stuff of nightmares: huge, hairy, and fast!  I smashed these invaders with everything I had until I learned from a friend of mine from Italy that they hunted the roaches!  From that moment on, I left 2 or 3 of these mammoth arachnids alone since we had a common enemy: the Roach.

Our roaches came into the house through every possible point of entry: drains, vents, cracks in the walls, under both the front and the back doors, and through the closed windows.  Like every other spouse on that base, I spent most of my life scrubbing our home.  All of our food was stored in the frig and freezer.  Ziplock bags and sealing containers were a must for my sanity concerning my family's food.  Counters scrubbed, stove wiped down, and oven clean, I really didn't have more that I could do.

There was one weapon that we had that I had NEVER considered....

Nutmeg.

Our Nutmeg LOVED our invaders.  With a vengeance, she spent her nights hunting and prowling through the house.  After a while, I made sure that EVERY door and cupboard was left open for her to stalk to her hearts desire.  I became accustomed to the various body parts that I would find in the morning.  Waking early, I tried hard to find them before my Angel could.  I was always able to tell what she was up for snacking on.  Crunchy or Chewy???  Dismemberment was a hobby of hers that made me eternally thankful that I was bigger than she was.  Scary to admit, but I love a sociopath!  Spiders, roaches, flying things...they were no match for her.  A few times I interrupted her entertainment just put the bug out of its misery!

It is sad to say that we actually got acclimated to our buggy situation.  Much like a frog in a pot of progressively heated water, we become numb to it all.  Still persisting in scrubbing the home, seeing a critter scurry by in my peripheral vision no longer sent chills down my spine.  In a sense, I honestly gave up claiming our home to be our own.

By the time we were to pack up, I was more than happy to get rid of the house filled with bugs.  I washed every bit of clothing and linen, bagging and sealing them in the massive Ziplock Storage Bags.  Systematically going through everything we owned, I prayed that whatever hitch hiker might try to join us would die in route.

Our Nutmeg???

Well, let's just say that our lovely lady gained a whopping two pounds during our two year in the Orient.  Concerned for her health, I had spoken to her vet about what I was supposed to do about it.  He smiled and told me that she would lose the extra weight as soon as the "snacks" were no longer in her diet and not to adjust her food.  He closed by saying that we were lucky to have been blessed by such a gifted hunter!

The Bug Chain. Pt. 1

Bugs.  What on earth is it with my pairing locations with their bugs?!?!  As I sit here, in the Pacific, thinking back on all our past assignments, one of the major things that forms a chain between each is bugs.  Every single place that I have lived or spent any amount of time in my life is always marked with very graphic memories of their insects.  I seriously wish that I had known this pattern would be there when this journey started.  You had better believe that I would have taken pictures...and LOTS of them!  No, I am not going to ruin the mystery and talk about the bugs for each location in this one post...that would spoil the fun.  Instead, I am going give you Part 1 of The Bug Chain.

Since the Great White North had such harsh weather with temperatures that spent most of their time down in the negatives, their insects had to be resilient little freaks.  It wasn't as if they could escape to a nice warm fire during the winter months like the rest of us.  The big thing, bug wise, that I noticed our very first winter was the lack of flies.  They were no where to be seen.  Seriously, I thought I had lucked out!  I had never thought there could be a location that didn't have flies.  But my glee would be short lived when the ultimate thaw in May took place.

With the disappearance of snow came the emergence of the Great White North's mascot bug: The Mosquito.  Oh my, did it emerge with a vengeance!  The first hint of a problem came when I started noticing these faint gray clouds that started forming over grassy areas.  Up close, because these were the first hatchlings after a long winter, they were puny, tiny, weak looking little guys.  But there were a lot of them!  Unless I wanted to dowse myself with bug repellant, my daily walks became quite an adventure.

On base, there were areas that were worse than others.  I learned quickly to avoid walking near parks, ball fields, or long expanses of grass.  These places were absolutely infested with them.  One step on the grass would raise an army of mosquitos into on defending their turf to the death.  Now, in hindsight, I think it is quite hilarious.  We had our own proverbial minefield, right there, in the Great White North.  Let me just say that mowing the lawn resulted in an explosion of mosquitos on nightmarish proportions.

As I mentioned earlier, the first round of mosquitoes were very small in size.  With horror and a morbid fascination, we would actually see the following generations get bigger and bigger, ending with the largest mosquitos we had ever seen.  I remember how I would get a closer look at them as they rested on the window screens.  By late summer, when the Great White North was preparing for its long winter, the mosquitos were so great in size that I could see that they were actually brown with what reminded me of tiger striped designs.  By the end of summer, I felt that those little blood suckers were appropriately designed.  Predators indeed!

Just as the military went to war against the Dak-Rats, they also launched a campaign against the mosquitoes.  West Nile was the major headline in the news at that time, and our leaders took every measure they could think of to eradicate their foe.  Our version of the ice cream truck would slowly drive through our neighborhoods spraying bug killer, causing all the mothers to quickly usher their children inside...and rushing to close all the windows and doors. Luckily, they timed these "drive bys" to happen at sunset, when children were supposed to be indoors anyway.  But woe to anyone who had a BBQ going on.  "A little bug killer with your steak???  Don't mind if I do!"  It was just part of the summertime fun.

By the end of summer, I discovered the reason for our very healthy population of blood suckers.  Like many military bases, the Great White North was built on unwanted land in the middle of a swamp. While the military had converted the area to a small town, all the bones of being a swamp still remained: unpredictable soil make up that resulted in construction issues, beautiful birds, frogs, soggy ground, and last...but not least...mosquitos.  After that first assignment, the first thing I would ask about a new location would be whether the base was built on a swamp and what kind of bugs did they have.  I can't imagine what our sponsors may have thought of me.  But after the dealing with the Great White North's Bug Mascot, I feel that it is a very legitimate concern.