Thursday, February 16, 2006
Where Did All the Bugs Go?
Ever since I moved into my Gramercy bunker, I have had a small bug problem. (A few tiles in the bathroom were left open and exposed between my moving in the guy before me moving out, thus letting the critters walk right in.) They're not big guys like the one the right, but little tiny black beetles. They usually come to visit me more in summer, but lately I've seem them in one corner of the kitchen, hanging around some cabinets. More strange, I don't keep any food in those cabinets, just wine glasses and extra plates.
I don't eat a lot in my apartment. (I'm never there.) And when I do, it's take out and it's just tossed into a large garbage bag and taken out within a day or so. Nevertheless, the bugs were there, and I had to do something about them.
The fact that I wasn't home a lot wasn't helping matters. Bugs like warm, dark places and my empty, overheated apartment must have seemed like a great place to hang out. So last Saturday, right before I left for Connecticut, I took a can of Raid and sprayed the perimeter of the cabinets where I had seen the little buggers. Then I opened a window to let the fumes out and got the hell out of Dodge.
When I finally got home on Monday night, I expected to come home to a pile of dead bug carcasses on my counters. After all, isn't that what Raid does, it kills bugs? But instead there was...nothing. No dead bugs...not even any live bugs...anywhere. It was as if they had just picked up and left.
Where did they go? They liked my place for so long, why jump ship after two days of being exposed to Raid? Is Raid the bug equivalent of Agent Orange or Anthrax?
I'll never know. All I know is they're gone...for now.
But I can still never sublet my place out...who would put up with this to the tune of $1,300 a month?
