Most of the time I can avoid insects. I even plan for them when I can. I have fly screens to keep the flying ones out of the house and sticky stuff to catch them if they sneak in. I regularly clean floors and bedding, and I use extendable dusters to clear corners and ledges of spider webs.

Today, though, I encountered two unfamiliar bugs. The first revealed itself when I was on my patio. I noticed that one of my potted plants was housing lots of small white bugs, or nests, or cocoons on the underside of lots of leaves. I didn’t know what they were, so I took a couple of pictures.

A Google search suggested mealybugs, but I wasn’t convinced. The mealybug pictures weren’t quite the same as the thing I was looking at, but they were pretty close. Given my doubts and lack of insect-awareness, I decided the bugs had to go. I donned some of the latex disposable gloves that I had bought during the pandemic and went out to strip that plant of infested leaves. Once I started turning branches upside down, though, I realized the problem was bigger than I had thought. Stripping leaves would not be sufficient. I had to prune whole branches.

I clipped away at that plant (which I inherited from the previous owner and still cannot identify) and I removed most of the lower branches. Once I had filled a large Ziplog bag with bugs and branches, I thought my work was done.

What I had not anticipated, however, was the hour-long cringing spine-chilling that comes with bug-association. The shivers stayed with me much longer than I would have thought. Then, just as I thought I was over it, I looked out of the living room window and realized I had missed some bugs. As the sun shone on that darned plant, I saw that I had missed a few.

By this time, though, I was mad. Bug-shivers be damned. I was going to annihilate those beasts. I took up my garden hose, turned the dial to an insect-defying jet, and sprayed it on the undersides of those renegade leaves. I had to hold my ungloved fingers under the leaves to reach my goal, but ultimately all the white bugs were gone.

Then, as I sat in my recliner revelling in my glory, I saw a centipede crawl out from under the couch. How dare it! I am ready for you, centipede! No creepy-crawly shivers going on now. I am getting you out of here!

I pulled a file folder off my shelf and scooped that creepy thing up faster than a centipede can crawl. It actually paused in shock for a moment, but then I flung it out of my living room onto my patio so fast it thought it had entered a new dimension.

It hasn’t experienced Back to the Future, exactly, but that bug has now joined the same universe as the remains of those insects I ejected from my patio plant. I hope they find a bug DeLorean to take them away from here. Otherwise I may have to take more drastic measures. I’m working on the flux capacitor as we speak.