the saga continues...

...with that ongoing, periodic, sporadic millipede invasion. I had high hopes with the thought they would not return en masse this year. Having only seen the random, occasional, deceased little curled up insect, believing that the continual influx was not in the offing I thought we were largely bug-proof. Apparently it was a mistake for me to put the effort into having a clean kitchen floor several days ago. I've had to get the broom out each morning since. To sweep and deposit the wee wiggly things in the trash.

If there was only one or maybe two, I find myself surprisingly willing to just pick them up. Bend over and pinch them, gingerly, between finger and thumb and drop in the can. But with greater numbers I am far less amenable to that task - and will only eliminate with the broom and dustpan.

There is, thankfully, always a light on over the sink, so you would not acciddently step on one and smoosh it. I don't walk around, even in the house, barefooted. Always have on socks, and sometimes clogs, but usually shoes. So readily nix the idea of putting bare soles down on one and making a disgusting sound to accompany the disgusting mess. Not fond of surprises, especially the squished bug sort.

Still completely baffled as to where they come from, how they get in the house, but thankful the problem is mostly limited to the kitchen. I am wondering if their life span is so short that when they come through some heretofore unnoticed crack they use for entry, creeping across the tiles is a far as they can get before the natural end of life. Whereupon they come to a demise, and slowly curl up into a little comma and decease. There is the occasional wanderer in other parts of the house. (It sounds like a chronic problem, or that I am a poor housekeeper - both of which have some measure of truth.) But generally confined to the tiles on the kitchen floor.


In an effort to be environmentally friendly, I do not often interrupt the food chain. Admitting to giving those little black grasshoppers a good squirt to keep them from reproducing in my spider lily bulb plants. And occasionally discovering I have sliced an earthworm in half, thereby doubling the population. I am certainly willing to make a deliberate exception for the millipedes, and plan to spray inside and out, hoping to end the current invasion.