The tropical climate of the Philippines is famous for all the bugs that exist in the country, and not just in the jungles. There are three kinds of insects that frequently irritate me. The rest are inconsequential. My wife, Josie, and I tolerate them because they don’t seem to matter much.
Cockroaches, the Nastiest Bugs
I don’t care about the cockroaches living in their nesting environment, which is usually in the ground near rotting vegetation. They can’t nest inside my house because there aren’t any hollow spaces. My walls are solid cement, even on the inside. The only places they can get into the house is under the doors leading to the outside, the dirty kitchen and the laundry room. We have no other openings they can get through.
One day, I started finding cockroaches inside the house. They were the large ones, and even the geckos left them alone. It was even worse the next day. I hate cockroaches, and I cannot rest until every one of those inside the house are dead, and I’ve disposed of their carcasses. Since I had some boric acid stored away, I decided I’d end their incursion as quickly as possible.
I sprinkled some on both sides of the front door, both sides of the door to the dirty kitchen and both sides of the door to the laundry room. Since I found them in the upstairs rooms, I sprinkled some along the upstairs hallways. I wasn’t worried about the kitchens or bathrooms. The only time I saw them in those places is when they were running away from me. For several days after that, I found nothing but dead cockroaches all over the house. The day after I stopped finding them, I cleaned up the boric acid. I haven’t seen any since then.
Ants
There are so many ant species, I can’t even count them. Some are big, some are tiny. Until I created a poison concoction and placed containers of the stuff around the kitchen area, they would get into everything. I cut the bottom of some plastic bottles and then filled them with mixtures of boric acid and sugar water. Millions of ants (or so it seems) got into those containers and in about three days, I didn’t see hardly any, other than the tiniest ones. They ignored the concoction altogether, so I don’t know what to do about them.
Prior to this routine, I couldn’t leave anything out on the table or counter. Ants would discover the food within minutes. The last time I put a plate of food on the table, I didn’t see a single ant on the table.
Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are out at dawn and dusk. Some of my relatives mistake gnats for mosquitoes, which kind of makes sense. Both of them bite. We shouldn’t have mosquitoes bothering us at all since we don’t have ponds or stagnant rivers nearby. The problem is all the idiots who refuse to dump or cover the containers that accumulate water when it rains. This is despite the reminders broadcast on radio and TV every year.
I sometimes find a stray mosquito inside the house. That only happens when someone leaves a door open during the hours when they’re active. They get inside, get confused by the light and never go away. I leave smears of blood on the walls at times, at least until I decide to clean it up.
Image by Dirk (Beeki®) Schumacher from Pixabay