HEADLINE: Bugs, phobias, and fear—they all have one thing in common—get rid of them!
I’m not particularly fond of bugs, but stalking creepy crawly things seems to be my ongoing misfortune. Whether it was chasing wasp escapism around the family room of my childhood home or fearlessly shoe-stomping centipedes invading my sleeping quarters while travelling through Sicily—insects are not my friend. But under my mother’s tutelage, I would say bug retaliation became a learned thing while living in northern Manitoba.
While cooped up in the house during the winter months, my mom was often found doing various things. Some days she baked. On other days she sewed matchy-match outfits for my two sisters and me. And on more laid-back days, she sorted through her paper collections of recipes, letters, and family photos.
On one blizzard-like evening, I heard my mom rummaging around in the upstairs storage room, a cozy space two doors down from my bedroom. With a coffee cup resting on a stack of papers, she had settled into sorting while I attended to my stuffed animals and imaginary friends. My mom could spend hours in her make-shift craft room, pasting newspaper recipe clippings into her growing pile of scrapbooks.
Everything was ticking along, and there was a comfortable hum to our evening activities. Having mom hanging out in my “hood” was comforting—it made me feel safe yet independent. I was in the middle of writing out a receipt for my fictitious customer when I heard a slap, or maybe it was more like a splat, and then silence. I had heard these sounds before, but tonight seemed a bit odd.
“I’ve had it!” my mother shouted.
“Mom, what’s going on? I asked as I approached the room cautiously.
“The silverfish are eating my scrapbooks!” she said.
I found her holding her right shoe high up in the air and slamming it down on the floor with such force that all the loose papers, newspaper clippings, and family photos were swirling about like an indoor winter storm. At the time, I didn’t entirely know what a silverfish was, but I knew it wasn’t welcome in our home.
Unwelcomed insect guests were a consistent problem for us as a family, and once we moved to Winnipeg’s countryside, daily bug inspection became the norm. The instructions for garden maintenance (developed by my father) were endless. There were strategies for everything—how to dust for aphids, drown out spider mites, and add broken eggshells around the base of a tomato plant to keep the slugs away. But one insect ruled the outdoor kingdom, and humans were one of its favourite hosts.
After working in the yard all day and having our nightly baths, my sisters and I would sit in our jammies around the kitchen table, ready for a detailed investigation. We would inspect each other’s hair, neck, and ears for ticks trying to make a home on our scalp or under our skin. Finding the critters was only half the battle, a.k.a. fun—getting rid of them was even more exciting. When a specimen was spotted, my mother was the first to inspect it, and when she proudly announced that it was indeed a tick and not a speck of garden dirt, the mini surgery began.
My father would stand at the stove and heat the end of a metal knitting needle while my mother would disinfect the tick area. When the needle was red hot, my mother, the registered nurse now turned doctor, would call out the procedural orders.
“Kleenex.”
The patient’s job was to hand over a clean and folded white tissue. Then, with our hair clipped up on top of our heads, my mom would place the tissue below the tick entry. And then, using her left thumb, she would apply pressure below the partially buried tick.
“Needle.”
Dad would hand over the red-hot instrument, and Mom would take the needle, jamming it into the back end of the tick. The rest of us would stand around and watch in awe. Then, all aggravated and dazed, the tick would slowly emerge, wriggling from below the skin surface.
When the tick’s head was almost clear of the entry point, my father would realign his eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose, lean in with a pair of sterilized tweezers, and crush the tick to its death.
Moments later, we were all on to the next capture.
Based on our collective education around insect elimination, you would think my sisters and I were effective at bug removal—but I have learned that this is not entirely true (for all of us).
Several summers ago, my two sisters and I took our mother to Nova Scotia. This Atlantic province is an agricultural wonder and perfect for a mother-and-daughter vacation. We travelled along the coast, staying at Inns or B&Bs, and one of our stops included a charming country inn in Annapolis Valley. We arrived late in the evening, lugging our heavy suitcases up the grand central staircase, making about the same racket you would hear from an active construction site. My mother and I shared a large suite while my two sisters stayed in a smaller room opposite the second-floor gallery.
Mom and I were unpacking when I heard a knock on our door. It was my younger sister Lois, and without saying a word, she motioned for me to come to her room. I could tell something was up, but I thought it was for a “discussion” about the following day’s activities. Lois pushed the door open when I arrived at their room and ushered me in.
My other sister, Connie, was standing beside a tall wooden dresser. I noticed a single white tissue on the dresser’s surface with a tiny black speck of something or other lying in the centrefold.
“What is it?” I asked. “A tick?”
“I think it’s a bed bug!” Connie whispered.
I looked at her, then Lois, and then back again. I was confused. “Why do you think it’s a bed bug?”
Lois pointed to the white tissue, “Well, look. What do you think? It looks like a bed bug, right?”
I glanced at them again, thinking they might be playing a practical joke, but they were clearly concerned. “Well, let’s start with the most basic of questions. Is it a bug, or is it a speck of dirt?”
“I don’t know,” Lois stated. “Can you just look at it? You’re the big sister.”
I moved towards the dresser to inspect the specimen. The black speck was indeed the corpse of a small insect.
“It is not a bed bug,” I said.
“How do you know?” they both asked in unison.
“It is too big. Besides, this insect has wings,” I said.
I moved towards the entry door, and with one hand on the doorknob, I turned back, looking at their still concerned faces as they perched on the edge of their suitcases stacked in the middle of the room. “It is not a bed bug! Now, stop fretting and go to sleep.”
based on a true story
