I don’t use the word skeevy very often. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I used it. But it was the first word that came to my mind when I came home to find a host of ants in my kitchen feeding off some cat spit up.
Perhaps it is a stereotypical girl thing that I don’t like bugs, or snakes for that matter, but I don’t often come across snakes in New York City. But bugs, well that’s something else.
Growing up, we had water bugs down in the basement. I hated to have to go down there to get laundry, seltzer, whatever. Even after my parents had the basement “finished” the front area, near the boiler and the downstairs door, always ran a risk of housing a huge bug or two. Sometimes, the bugs would actually venture upstairs to the kitchen. I was always freaked when I saw one, and always managed to do something so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it—that was one of my father’s jobs! I used to put a glass over them, so that my father would see it as soon as he rounded the bend on his way to the kitchen.
I would like to say that my years living in the kibbutz toughened me up – after all, there were slimy eels slithering up the bathroom walls after every good rain–but it didn’t. Big bugs, little bugs, spiders, just not my thing. But seeing a whole tribe of them feasting on spit up in my kitchen—that rises the whole thing from ‘really don’t like’ to skeevy. Teetering on the verge of vomitatious.
So I am grateful, more than I can even convey, that I have a husband who is probably skeeved out as well, but does not say a word when I say, “I can’t even stay here—you have to clean it all up yourself,’ and leave him alone with a gallon of bleach. Grateful for mega vanilla Oreos, my loving cats, a new batch of succulents to plant—yes a resounding yes to all of that. But a good man to clean up fierce, jumbo, man – eating ants…priceless.
