Okay, I confess.......

[Edited to add: WARNING - not for the squeamish! Do not read while eating your breakfast!]

There are some critters I like more than others. At the top of my list (in no specific order) are dogs and donkeys and piggies and cats and alpacas and llamas and sheep and horses….and among those at the bottom are slugs and moths and maggots.

And in the last couple of weeks I’ve had to deal with all three of the species of critters at the bottom of the list.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a dead cat on the shoulder of the road in front of my house, no doubt hit by the cars that perpetually fly along the road at 100 km/hr rather than the posted speed of 40. I got some rubber gloves and started to gently lift it up to dispose of its body, only to discover that it had obviously been there for at least a few days ….. I won’t get into details. If you ever watched CSI or X-Files, you’ll know what I discovered. Let’s just say I phoned the city and they came to get it instead. I couldn’t handle it.

Then shortly after that, my house became infested with little Indian meal moths. They were all over the living room – forty or fifty of them at a time – on the ceiling, the walls, the drapes, flying around my face every time I moved. I looked them up online and learned they are often transported in dog food and rice and other grain-based foods. So I meticulously inspected my kitchen cupboards. However, all the food there is kept in plastic containers as I am paranoid that mice will get into the pantry, a constant possibility when you live in a very old house in the country. Mice in the fields are cute; mice in the house are not. But I digress. No sign of moths in the kitchen. Nothing. Nada.

But every evening, they appeared all over the living room. Unlike some of my acquaintances who will open a door or window to shoo mosquitoes, flies and moths out without killing them, I favoured capital punishment and whopped the little blighters. And still they kept coming – night after night after night. I pulled out all the furniture, and that’s when I saw it: the modem for the new digital phone was crawling with Indian Meal moth worms, and on the floor beneath was a pile of the casings from the larvae. Apparently some very productive moths had decided to lay their eggs in the equipment while it was being shipped or in storage, and they hatched out in the warmth of my living room. I put my abhorrence for pesticides aside and sprayed the heck out of it, and then called the phone company to come take it away. Another thorough vacuuming of every stick of furniture where they might be hatching another generation, and the problem appears to be solved – touch wood.

And the last couple of days, for some unknown reason, the slugs have come out in full force. On the narrow trail to the back of the pasture, I counted 207 in just a 100-foot stretch this morning!!!! Aaaackkk! Big black and green slimy things crawling everywhere so it is difficult to even walk the path without stepping on them. Worst of all, they get caught in the long fur of two certain long-haired mostly black dogs, where they are invisible to the human eye and then suddenly show up on the carpet, the couch, or (((((shudder)))))) my bed.

I’m sure maggots, moths and slugs serve some useful purpose on this earth; I just wish they would choose to serve it far, far away from my home.