Battle of the Bugs

By Jean A. Moore

I'll tell you, there's a serious war going on, and I don't mean just the one with the orange cones. I mean the war right here in the Valley, with a capital V, which rhymes with B and that stands for Bugs! It renews itself every spring. After the snow melts, the lilacs bloom and so do the bugs. When the weather warms up, those little buggers attack in force.

Now I know there are “good” bugs, but I wage war against the wicked bugs that overrun our yards and creep into our homes and even into our food. The first wave is usually the little sugar ants. They aren't satisfied to stay out in the garden. Yesterday, I discovered an army of them had formed a solid line from the back door, along the edge of the tile, up the underside of the cupboard and onto the sink where they were helping themselves to the bread crumbs. I went into defense mode and tried to block their progress by sticking my bare toe under the back door. The little scum bags bit me! I grabbed my insect spray and gunned them down. I won the skirmish...temporarily. I have to keep on my toes, so to speak, because I know they'll try to infiltrate my kitchen again.

Then come the fruit flies. Although they are slow, they have a way of slipping up your nose or into your mouth. Our grandson went online and found out how to make a fruit fly trap by putting a ripe banana in a bottle, covering the top with shrink wrap, and making tiny pinholes in the top. The flies crawl inside, but lack the smarts to get back out. This worked. Then I suggested that if the pin holes were bigger, more flies would be trapped. NOT! Instead, I created a fly brothel. They crawled in, found a mate, and then whole families of them flew back out to renew the attack on our faces. So I put a new top on the trap and we battled the three or four flies that were left with modern technology—we  whacked them with a rolled-up newspaper.

The next invasion happens in the garden from aphids who are bent on shredding my beautiful roses. There was not a ladybug to be seen, so armed with my sure-shot insect spray gun, I set up a new battle front on my patio. I fought valiantly until dusk, when I was driven inside by a deadly army of mosquitoes who were trying to suck my Type A blood and give me West Nile Virus.

Grasshoppers are gathering outside the city, covering the farmer's fields and homes. The TV news shows people crunching their way up the driveway and sweeping those creepy critters away from their doorways to get inside. When are the seagulls coming to join in the battle? Oh wait, they did come, and they ate as many hoppers as their tummies could hold. It was a like a scene right out of the old movie Brigham Young. I tried to hire a group to seagulls to fly over my house twice a day on a hunt-and-kill mission, but I don't speak Squawkese.

These six-legged buggers eat our food, our clothes, our houses, and even us, but I think I have a way to win this war. Let's turn the tables and learn how to eat the bugs. Dr. Loren Cordain's book, The Paleo Diet, says that early humans ate bugs for millions of years before they became farmers. According to him, insects are a much higher quality food than things like leaves, fruit, flowers, and nuts. I confess that I ate a chocolate covered grasshopper in my younger days. It was crunchy, but the chocolate made it palatable. My husband didn't care for my choice and refused to kiss me for a week.

If we eat bugs, we could make a small start in the war we are waging. Let’s use chocolate covered ants in our cookies. Or how about Shoo Fly Pie made with real flies? A nice pot of mosquito stew … that would taste zesty. By eating insects, we could wage cruel war on the bugs. Perhaps they'll erect a bronze statue of me next to the seagull monument on Temple Square, with my hand raised on high, victoriously holding a cooking pot.