“Serving overseas as a small-town boy from America is intense, stressful and humorous! Enjoy a light-hearted story with me from our last 20 years overseas!”
—Matt
SEASON FOR EVERY BUG
During those first few really hot days in the spring, everything comes to life in Indiana – or maybe better said, becomes active. Ants seem to be the things that activate the most in my personal experience. During the cold months of the winter and early spring, crumbs on the table are left untouched and loosely closed bags of chips are undisturbed. And then all of a sudden, whammy!, the ants have arrived. It must be getting warmer. It happens every year, but somehow it always catches me off guard. I naively wish for relief from the cold Indiana weather, only to wish for relief from those ants that seemed to know every entry point into a home.
My worst “temperature change ant experience” was discovering them, not when beginning to eat from an opened bag of snack food, but after grazing for a while and getting to the bottom. Blahh! How many did I eat?!
Well, I got my wish when moving overseas and never have had a problem with cold weather. I live in a place that basically has two seasons, spring and summer and I have no ant problems either. However, ants seem like a dream when I discovered the dynamics related to a “two warm seasons” place – cockroaches that have a long growing season! I was surprised that even locals who had grown up with cockroaches had a cringing dread of them. These nocturnal bugs, like ants, come into super active mode after a stretch of warm days (our transition from spring to summer).
At transition time, if we venture out for a walk in the evening or an early morning jog, you can hear the scratchy crawl of these roaches on the roads and sidewalks. Smashing these Hot Wheel car size bugs is like crunching a stack of 4 or 5 Dorito chips under your foot – yuck! These super big, tough roaches even have bullet proof stomachs. I once put cubes of green rat poison blocks in my office to get rid of the big fury pests (that also grow bigger here without a winter season). However, I was attracting cockroaches and these bugs could happily eat the rat poison without any noticeable negative effect.
As the Indiana winters go on (after having endured the rain of the autumn), Indiana can be glad to have four true seasons.
Something similar ever happen to you? Contact me and let me hear your story!
Matt’s Mishaps, PO BOX 114, Grabill, IN 46741
