In a recent post Marc mentioned that I probably live somewhere that has real insects. We do have insects. All the windows and the doors of the balcony have screens that are supposed to keep the insects out. But still we seem to have quite a few of them living inside the apartment with us.

I arrived home one night with Rachel and when we turned on the light a large cockroach skittered across the floor. It was horrible. We were both too wussy to actually kill it. I trapped in under my bodhrán and left it for Marty to deal with when he got home. Rachel didn’t have much luck with insects. She went to get something out of her bag one morning and screamed. It was crawling with little black ants. The bottom of the bag was full of fox’s glacier mints and these must have attracted the ants. Christine took the bag out onto the balcony and removed everything from it while Rachel and I cowered in the living room glancing out from time to time to see if she was finished yet. Since then we’ve had an ant problem. I don’t really mind one or two ants but I can’t cope if there are hundreds of these in the one place. We’ve managed to find out where they are getting in and Marty has promised to sort this out.

The mosquitoes are hard to see as they are so small. But the bites are really easy to see – especially on my arms as they swell into big read lumps. I’ve been trying to find a way to become less attractive to mosquitoes but I’m not sure that any of the methods I’ve read to do this actually work. I don’t want to cover myself in chemicals so I’ve been taking vitamin B and eating more garlic. If nothing else the local men should find me less attractive.

Thankfully the cicadas all still seem to be outside. They are so loud that sometimes they manage to drown out the drills on the building site beside the apartment. When it gets dark it almost sounds as if an army of these have gathered outside the apartment and they are getting ready to attack. But so far they just make a lot of noise.

The other bug we have isn’t an insect. I don’t usually mind spiders but these ones have managed to make me scream on a couple of occasions. Well, maybe not scream but I’ve made that yipping noise that women can make if you startle them. The spiders jump. If you happen to walk near one it jumps and I keep thinking that it’s going to jump on me. Marty thinks they are cute and likes to watch them jump. I’ve checked and they aren’t dangerous so I suppose I’ll just have to get used to them. Actually one of the problems with the bugs is that Marty seems to like all of these apart from the mosquitoes. I’m worried that his solution to the ant problem might be to cultivate them and have an ant farm in the living room.