The plague that is gnats

At this very moment, I have waged war against the gnats. They've taken a pride point of mine (a feat for which I've worked very hard to achieve over the past few years: keeping plants alive), and ruined it. This has changed our very lives as we know it. 

It started with a few. So out came the homemade apple cider vinegar traps. And it was immensely satisfying to survey a trap and see their corpses at the bottom of the bowl. Yes. How dare you enter my house. Fly in my face. And think you can get away with it.  I thought all was well. 

But each passing day brought one or two more into existence. Into our faces. Onto the table in front of us. And after a whirlwind of 3 weeks, there were magically many more. And we had yet to discover where they originated from. 

So I bought sticker traps and stuck them in three plants. To my utter delight, they caught many more gnats. I told my mother all about these traps, and she acknowledged my resourcefulness to turn to Amazon and told me she was so proud of me. So proud. And along with her approval, it was so satisfying, surveying a sticker trap, and seeing their frozen corpses stuck to the sticker. Yeah, eat it. How dare you enter my house. Fly in my face. And think you can get away with it.  I thought all was well.

The gnats multiplied within two days. I closely inspected each plant. Every innocent plant yielded no hidden gnat community. Except possibly maybe one. That one now lives a new life in the backyard. I took desperate measures and condemned the rest of the plants to the guest room. I opened the blinds for them for sunlight and said, "This is all that I can do for you." And then I closed the door shut behind me. 

Yet the gnats have not been deterred. Crazy things have been happening. I've mistaken the same mole on my arm to be a gnat multiple times. I'll spasm, ready to slap myself silly, only to discover, oh, that's my mole.

Just like the age-old bullying question why are you hitting yourself asks, I've been hitting myself. I'll feel the whisper light touch of a gnat, immediately slap the offending appendage with the force of a thousand suns, and be left with no dead gnat body, only a stinging, red, splotchy limb. 

I've already had one gnat somersault in the air in front of me, and booped me on my nose. Others have come and whispered in my ear, only to have me shriek suddenly and flap my arms furiously beside me. I look like a crazy person. Sammy has already told me not to randomly scream, but I can't help it.

Sammy and I have been trying to cope by keeping a tally. He said, "I killed one at my desk; that's one down!" But I killed two in the bedroom last night. Even so, we are the real losers. We've sunk tens of dollars in traps, and I was a fool to ever think I could conquer them. Twice.


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