Before we moved to our small town in Tennessee and again shortly after, residents told us how much we’d love it.
“Y’all are going to be so happy here. It’s a great place to raise kids.”
“The people here are so much nicer than in Los Angeles.”
“These are the best schools in the state.”
“Wait until you see the trees around here in the fall. The scenery is gorgeous.”
“It’s the best of both worlds. You can be in downtown Franklin with all the good shopping, then drive for five minutes and you’re in the country, with horses running around in the fields.”
They were correct on all counts. The scenery is lovely, the people are nice, the schools are excellent, and the traffic is so much lighter, my ability to maneuver and simultaneously exchange hand signals with other drivers has atrophied.
However, after a year of living here, I realize they omitted a key bit of information. The full disclosure sales pitch would’ve gone more like this:
“Y’all are going to be so happy here. It’s a great place to raise kids.”
“The people here are so much nicer than in Los Angeles.”
“These are the best schools in the state.”
“Wait until you see the trees around here in the fall. The scenery is gorgeous.”
“By the way, during the summer we get some seriously BIG-ASS bugs.”
It’s not that the other places I lived were bug-free, you understand. There are bugs everywhere. In Chicago, I once moved into a townhouse that had just been vacated by a family of slobs who apparently considered it beneath them to clean the kitchen. I spent the first month conducting chemical warfare against an army of cockroaches. One of them even volunteered for a suicide mission that involved hiding in my slippers and inducing cardiac arrest. It nearly succeeded.
But here’s the difference: In Chicago, if I happened to walk into a dark room occupied by roaches, I was alerted to their presence by the sound of my shoes crushing them. In Tennessee, I’m alerted to their presence by tripping over them. If I found a roach in my kitchen in Chicago, I reached for a magazine. Here I look for a hammer or frying pan … and only because I don’t own a gun. I’ve even backed away from a couple of cockroach confrontations after realizing I lacked the weaponry to assure victory.
That’s the downside of living in an area with gorgeous, green scenery: The scenery is gorgeous because trees, grass and other plants love water and humidity. So do bugs.
One of the few advantages of living in the glorified desert known as Los Angeles is that mosquitoes were nearly non-existent. I could walk for an hour at night and return home without a mark. Not here.
This summer was, according to our neighbors, supposed to be light on mosquitoes. We had three snowstorms and record-cold temperatures last winter, which was supposed to decimate the mosquito population. Perhaps it would’ve worked out that way if not for the Great Nashville Flood of 2010, which blessed the area with countless pools of standing water. The mosquito population may have been decimated in winter, but the survivors bred like crazy in the impromptu swamps a few months later. Consequently, when I walk at night now, I have three choices:
- Wear long pants and long sleeves despite the hot, humid weather
- Spray toxic chemicals on my skin
- Return home with my skin looking like a 3-D map of the Andes and feeling anemic from the loss of blood
During last night’s walk, a large bug with wings landed on the hand that was holding my Romeo & Juliet cigar. I didn’t scream like a girl, but I did a frenzied, Irish-jig sort of thing that ended with me retrieving the still-burning cigar from a neighbor’s lawn — about 50 feet from the site of the jig.
What kind of bug was it? No idea. That’s the other downside of living in a moist, lush area: I’ve been introduced to bugs I didn’t know existed. I recognize a rat-sized roach as a roach, and I recognize swarms of mosquitoes as mosquitoes. But at least a dozen times this summer, I’ve killed worm-like creatures with approximately 6,000 legs — always in the downstairs bathroom. I still have no idea what they are. I just know they like being near indoor plumbing.
Twice now, I’ve come across a species of exceptionally long-legged and exceptionally fast spider. Both times I saw this spider (once in the TV room, once in the living room), I attempted to kill it. Both times the spider managed to spring across the room and escape into a vent as I was chasing it. When a 5’11” man with 34-inch legs loses a foot race with a 5-inch spider, something is wrong. If I had the same proportional speed, I could play for any team in the NFL and guarantee a string of 98-0 victories.
Last week I made the mistake of practicing my golf swing in the back yard while wearing shorts and chasing a wiffle ball into the bushes. When I woke up the next morning, my legs were covered with red, circular welts that itched like crazy. I looked like someone who lost a kicking contest with a gang of pepperoni pizzas.
Then there are the wasps. Like mosquitoes, wasps are hardly limited to the South. As I recounted in a previous post, I was stung twice during my youth in the Midwest, and in California, a wasp made a sortie in my direction after squeezing through an open window in the shower stall.
But in the past few weeks, despite being vigilant about keeping the doors and windows closed, I’ve had to kill three wasps inside my own house. I now keep my wasp-hunting gear — long pants, a hooded sweatshirt, a hooded jacket and winter gloves — laid out on a chair so I can slip into them at a moment’s notice, like a fireman.
Two days ago, my girls ran downstairs to my office to inform me a wasp was buzzing around their mid-level playroom — again. No idea how the flying demon found its way inside.
I put on my gear and went to the laundry room to arm myself with a can of RAID, only to discover that my wife had succumbed to the Go Green movement: our bug spray was now a can of “organic” pesticide made from orange-peel oils. I might have fallen for the Go Green pitch if not for the fact that she’d already informed me the orange-peel mosquito repellent she’d tried previously was worthless. So there I was, all geared up, imagining the results of spraying a wasp with organic bug-killer.
“Hey, thanks for the refreshing orange-peel spritz there, Mr. Human. Believe it or not, I’ll actually be dead in a few hours, but in the meantime, I’m just really, really pissed. You should probably commence screaming like a girl now, because I’m going to sting your ass at least 50 times before the orange-peel oil begins to weaken me.”
Fortunately, I dug around and found the can of RAID. It was nearly empty, so I took that as my primary weapon and carried the can of organic spray as a backup in my other hand. Shortly after I entered the playroom, the wasp — perhaps having heard warnings about humans wearing winter gear during summer — flew at me. I raised a can and sprayed, only to find myself noticing a pleasant orange aroma. Wrong weapon.
The wasp reacted by flying to the other side of the room and dropping behind a bookshelf. I’m pretty sure I heard it snickering back there. I tossed a toy against the bookshelf to try to roust it. Nothing. A few minutes later it flew out again, and this time I scored a direct hit with the RAID. Chemistry wins. Wasp loses. Orange-peel oil flunks battle-testing.
I love living in the South. I love the people, the attitude, and the scenery. But I’m praying for that first frost.
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