The Snack

I hate bugs. I try to pretend like I don’t, I try not to react to dramatically to finding bugs, because don’t want my kids to think that they are anything to be afraid of. But deep down, I detest them.

And I am not sure why. As a child I loved bugs, I was the kind of kid that felt bad when my dad killed a wolf spider. I caught lighting bugs and ladybugs, and ran to show my mom caterpillars, and rescued crickets (with my bare hands!) out of the house to release them back into the wild. But no longer. Something must have happened to me at some point, because now I do not like bugs.

When we moved up north, there were some definite environmental changes. I had never experienced a -40 winter before, the air is alot drier, summer seems much shorter. But my favorite part of moving up here, has been the shortage of scary bugs. O sure, we have mosquitoes, and flies, and wasps and ants. But I think that’s about it.

In the almost 2 years since our move, I have never encountered a bug I was to terrified to kill myself. No more quarter sized spiders in the corner of the shower, no more strange looking beetle/hornet looking insects that require being covered with a bowl until hubby comes home to kill it. (Yes, I am that pathetic.) It is one of the few things about living here that make me never want to move back south.

On vacation, at a rest stop early in the morning, I could tell that we were further south the minute I saw the dead June bugs lying on the sidewalk. And the dragonflies swooping around. And the mammoth ants dragging around items four times their size.

After a potty break, and helping Ms. Action change out of her pajama’s and into her clothes, I headed straight up the hill to the brand new picnic area. Ah yes, nice clean concrete, not a bug in sight. Here I could peacefully rearrange my diaper bag and let my children play without fear of large creep crawlies.

Baby Girl was fighting to get out of her car-seat, so I unbuckled her and after changing her into a dry diaper I set her down at the picnic bench and she happily marched around the picnic table holding onto the benches. I set Ms. Drama up on the table to change her out of her pajama’s. Everything was going so smoothly, Ms Action ran around in the grass exclaiming over one thing or another, Hubby stomped around stretching his legs, Ms. Drama was changed and put down to run around with her sister.

But unbeknownst to me, Baby Girl had stopped doing her laps around the table. When I looked down I saw her sitting under the table working away at something in her mouth. I picked her up to fish out the pebble or whatever it was and when I dug into her mouth my finger came out with the abdomen of a bug about the size of a pea, and a leg or two.

I will never know what kind of bug it was, because my blood ran cold as soon as I saw it. And I flung it as far away from my baby as possible. With a shriek I pried open her mouth and dug out the shreds of the hapless bug, throwing legs and guts every which way. My husband must have thought that the baby was being attacked from the way I was jumping around and shaking her, because he came running. Although he failed to see the intensity of the situation, after all it was just a bug.

A HUMONGOUS DISMEMBERED HALF INGESTED BUG!

Eeeeeeewwwwwww. I makes me shudder even now to think about it. After thoroughly cleaning out my babies mouth as much as I could and force feeding her several ounces of juice from her bottle to wash away the rest. I finally let my protesting baby down on the ground again. (I am not sure if she was protesting over the flavour of said bug, or because of the removal of her snack.) I guarded my children against all bugs for the rest of the stop, and even as we walked back to the car to get back on the road, I was still shaking.

I think we may end up staying in Canada.