The fruit flies can die, too

J-girl has been buying a lot of fruit from local vendors, and along with the fruit has come a massive invasion of fruit flies. Our house gets attacked by fruit flies every August. They start out in the kitchen where the fruit is, and then eventually end up in all of the bathrooms. One year we didn't get rid of them until April.

Instead of buying fruit fly traps or spraying poison, we have opted for a more high-tech approach. J-girl gets out the cannister vacuum and sucks them up. I have to admit that it's kind of addictive, hunting down the little pests and then sucking 'em right out of the air. It's not very practical, though, because it only reduces their numbers for the brief time it takes for the next batch to hatch out.

I've been wondering why we have such a problem with fruit flies and our neighbors don't. Last night I caught one of the little guys and took a close look at it. I nearly screamed in horror when I realized that it was the McCain variety of fruit fly. Being a democrat surrounded by republican neighbors, the fruit fly infestation finally made sense. They're not going away until I finally turn to the dark side and put McCain posters out on my lawn. They may even want me to make a donation to the republican party.

I refuse to be intimidated, though. I figure that they will all keel over and die if Obama wins the election. And if he doesn't, well, it won't matter anymore, because my neighbors will be a lot more difficult to live with than fruit flies.

The ants go marching...into the fires of hell, I hope!

I've hated ants ever since I can remember. I think they're evil. I smoosh them whenever I can. I want them all to die.

Everyone else I know is either neutral or pro-ant. That's because ants have gotten a lot of good press. Fables such as the grasshopper and the ants depict them as being hardworking, thrifty, and carefully planning for the future. In A Bug's Life, Disney invited us to cheer as the ants broke free from oppression. Every nature show on ants praises their strength and teamwork.

No one is willing to admit the truth about ants, which is that they are the creepy-crawly version of the vulture. They're nature's clean up crew. What's worse is that they have a personal vendetta against humans.

Don't believe me? Then you're just too brainwashed to deal with reality. Think for a minute. When was the last time an ant did you any good? Can't think of a time? That's because there isn't one. Now think of a time when ants caused you problems. Admit it--several instances came to mind, right? Here are some of mine:

• Ants used to invade the kitchen pantry when I was little. They would crawl up our legs and arms and bite us as we tried to clean them out.
• Ants used to invade my kindergarten classroom. My teacher made us sit on the floor despite the fact that ants were everywhere. It gave me nightmares, and I would wake up in the middle of the night absolutely sure that my bed was crawling with ants.
• One Halloween, I vowed to carefully ration my candy so that I would have candy all year long. The ants found my candy stash a couple of months later and I had to throw it all out. To this day I have a hard time believing in food storage.
• Ants crawled up one of my friends legs and began biting him in tender places. He had to immediately undress and brush them off. OK, so he was running up and down on their gigantic ant hill, but still, to bite a guy there and make him run around in circles, wildly flinging off clothes in all directions right in front of his sisters and their girlfriends? It's just not right.
• Our house was regularly invaded while we lived down in San Diego. They attacked our bedroom, our hallway, and our family room. They weren't as bright as the ants from my childhood, because they pretty much left the pantry alone. Nonetheless, streams of ants across walls and carpets are not acceptable.
  

In all honesty, I didn't start the war between ants and me. They did. That's why I feel justified in using particularly ruthless techniques against them. Just a couple weeks ago I repeatedly drove the tires of my car over a gigantic swarm of ants on the driveway, laughing demonically as I did so. I left a huge patch of smashed, red-brown ants for the wind to blow away. If only my kindergarten teacher had been there to see it.

Then I could have run over her, too.

Repetitive Clothes Wearing

My daughter wore the same thing today to her second day of school as she did on her first day. It's not that she didn't have anything else clean to wear. It's that the outfit was her first choice, was free from any large dirt stains, and was already out of her drawers and lying on the floor, easy to put on for a second day of school. It also helps that her mom and dad didn't realize she wore the exact same thing to school a second time until well after the school day was over. We're not really at the top of our game in the mornings at our house.

As the person who does the laundry in the house, I appreciate an extra day of wear in between washes. And yet, I still feel a little uneasy about it all. I was raised with the understanding that you had to at least change your shirt every school day. My mom also insisted that we change our underwear daily, but since she couldn't see 'em, I didn't change 'em. My daughter, on the other hand, regularly changes her underwear and then puts the same clothes right back on. She brags that last year she wore the same outfit to school for an entire week. We didn't even notice.

Some days I find myself wanting to follow my daughter's example. I think to myself, how many days in a row can you wear the same slacks to work? I figure that if a weekend occurs in between two of the work days, I can get at least an extra day of consecutive wearing. I also wonder if it's OK to wear the same shirt twice in the same week. Will people really know that I didn't wash it between wearings? Would they care if they knew?

And every year, I care a little less about the dos and don'ts of repeated clothes wearing. I'm planning on wearing the exact same clothes two days in a row this semester to see if anyone notices. Who knows? By the time I'm in my sixties, I might have narrowed my work wardrobe down to a favorite shirt and pair of pants that I'll wear the entire semester. And then again, my mom might catch wind of it and start showing up to dress me each morning. Even if she does, she still won't be able to make me change my underwear!

Rodent on the loose

Angel is usually a well-mannered, stay-in-one-corner-of-the-cage type of hamster. While she was at my mom's house during our recent 10 day vacation, she hid the entire time under one large clump of shavings. My mom was worried that she had died, so on the eighth day, she finally dug Angel out to make sure she was still breathing. And then Angel went right back into hiding. When we picked up the cage, the only sign of life was all of the hamster droppings that Angel had managed to kick through the bars. And might I add, for a hamster that is hardly ever seen, she sure produces a lot of poop.

To be honest, I think that Angel is extremely lazy. She won't run on her wheel or in her exercise ball. She doesn't even chew on the bars of her cage at night anymore. She pretty much seems to exist solely to eat, drink and make little grains of black rice.

But deep inside of Angel lives the sole of a rodent. They look docile and sweet, but they are conniving escape artists. Just ask my sister and her kids. While we were visiting them, we regularly saw the pet mouse that had escaped a couple of weeks earlier but had yet to be caught. My sister nearly threw a party the day that her boys managed to chase it outside (some time during the first week we were there), where it dove from the upper deck into the forest, gone forever. Then the degus got out in the garage. It took a couple of days of scheming and plotting by seven boys to corner and capture them. The three boys who managed to do it were instantly elevated to hero status.

Angel herself has managed escapes, albeit not lately. When we first got her, she found a broken bar in her cage and squeezed through the incredibly tiny opening. It took three escapes before we finally figured out her secret. Since then, she has been escape free. And with her lack of desire for activity, I thought her escape artist days were over.

Then Little J decided to buy a new cage at a garage sale. It was one of those plastic jobbies with all the tubes and satellite cages. I have little faith in those cages. They break way too easily, and then you have loose rodent somewhere in the house. With our last hamster, it was loose for nearly a week. It lived under the stove for a few days, leaving a scattering of droppings, and then found a hole in the wood floor that dropped into the gas fireplace in the basement. We found it a couple of days later when we went to turn on the fire. Good thing we saw him scurrying about before we turned up flame.

Back to Angel. Little J and her friend spent a few hours getting the new cage set up and cleaning out the old one. J-Girl declared that she was going to sell the old cage immediately. I told her it was better to keep it handy for when the new cage failed. Both Js looked at me like I had lost my marbles. But when we went to put Little J to bed early tonight so that she would be ready for the first day of school tomorrow, Angel was gone. Sure enough, one of the satellite cages had come apart, and even the laziest of hamsters couldn't resist that. We had no idea how long she had been out or where in the house she might be. We looked all over Little J's room, as well as the bedroom close by, and then gave up. After all, it was the first school night of the year. Fortunately for us, Little J heard Angel scurrying around on a table and managed to catch her. We then duct-taped everything up as tight as we could and then put Angel back into her new cage. I wasn't brave enough to insist on the old metal cage. I know that it's going to take at least two more escapes before either J will admit that the old man might have been right.

Webkinz gets real

Having an eight year old daughter, there was no way that I could escape the world of Webkinz. If you are fortunate enough not to know what Webkinz are, let me fill you in. They're stuffed animals that have a secret code attached to them that allows the owner to access the Webkinz website and engage in many different activities, including games, to earn cash and buy stuff for the online version of the stuffed animal. A mere $13.95 allows you to own the stuffed animal and play for a year on the website. You can buy a smaller version of the Webkinz, called Lil'kins, for $10.95.

I'm not completely against Webkinz, because a lot of the activities that children can engage in on the website involve logical reasoning, mathematics, and reading. But the cuteness level is way too high for my comfort. That's why I was so excited when Ganz, the makers of Webkinz, announced their new line of realistic, dual use (the physical toy and the online version) animals. It's called the Parakinz line, and consists of all the cute, cudely parasites that are such an important part of our lives.

The first release in the line is the Laughy Leech, shown above. Larger than the real life version, it nonetheless features an expandable outer skin and an inner blood bean bag. Pull the blood bag out of the end of the leech and you have the pre-meal leech. Put it back in, and your leech is well-fed and happy. It's suction cup head comes with replaceable 1/4 inch thick circular sticky pads that can actually make the leech adhere to your skin. This lovable pet also has stitched ribbing on one side that makes it curl around your body as you pretend to let it gorge on your blood. Naturally, this Parakinz allows you to access new parts of the Webkinz website that are not available to owners of Webkinz or Lil'kinz. These new features educate you about all the fun parasites can have with your body. The suggested retail price is only $11.95.

Other parasites planned for the line include the Musky Mosquito, Limber Tapeworm, and Nimble Head Lice. If this line is successful, Ganz plans to introduce a line of keychain bacteria and viruses of some of the most popular human STDs through the ages. Imagine the possibility of owning the lovable stuffed animal version of Syphilis. Also, think about the educational value for the children. The possibilities are endless.