The scorpions have all left the attic. For the house. I’m ordering a flamethrower to keep beside the bed. Just a small one, though, because I’m aware of fire safety. I bought the kind you use to make the top of crème br?lée crunchy. And a lot of lighter fluid. I still shoo spiders and moths out of the house with plastic cups, but these scorpions are going to die painfully.
Neighbors advised that we should place the feet of our beds in mason jars to keep the scorpions from crawling into bed with us at night, as glass is the only surface they’re unable to climb. I consider how much it would cost to cover everything in the house with a layer of glass, but Victor convinces me the glass couch would leave questionable marks on sweaty summer days. I add “have glass shoes made” to my to-do list so that I can keep scorpions from crawling up me when I stand in one place for too long. I suspect Cinderella had an undisclosed problem with scorpion infestation in her home too. Although knowing her, she was probably breeding them. That’s what I’d do if I were forced to be a slave in my own house. Plus, she made the rats and mice and pigeons design clothes for her, so she probably taught the scorpions to do tricks too. Maybe to hold hand mirrors for her with their pincers. Or to punish the lazier mice who would rather look for cheese than make a sash. Cinderella was kind of a bitch, now that I think about it.
Today the exterminator came out to spray for scorpions again, and he left a note saying that he found an enormous snakeskin next to our house. Then I screamed, “EVERYTHING IN THE COUNTRY WANTS TO KILL YOU,” and Victor told me to go lie down. But then I went to go look at the snakeskin, and I was all, “This is a used paper towel.” Then Victor said, “Dude. That’s totally a snakeskin that’s been shed. Look at the diamond scale pattern,” and I was all, “That’s a textured diamond weave to absorb more wetness. You can tell it’s a paper towel because snakeskins aren’t square. Or perforated.” And I spread it out on the ground and then he was all, “Huh. That is a fucking paper towel. I think we need a new exterminator.”
We’re probably not going to survive the year.
My foot. My welcome mat. My uninvited guest. (A mostly dead poisonous centipede.) I also found four scorpions that same day. I’m probably going to die here.
I’m still focused on finding the family cemetery in our subdivision, and I’ve taken to wandering in the empty fields, looking for headstones. A neighbor I hadn’t met yet pulled up to introduce herself and told me to be careful hiking because of all the snakes. I thanked her, but explained that I’m not a hiker and was just looking around for dead bodies. Victor says I’m not allowed to talk to the neighbors without him anymore.
Last night Victor was out of town, so there was no one to keep me from freaking out when something large started violently knocking on my bedroom wall at midnight. I called the exterminator to complain that something very loud was hurling itself at my bedroom wall. He said it was probably a field mouse trapped in the wall, and I said, “No. It sounds crazy-dangerous and huge. It sounds like a demon is throwing a bear into the wall. Or a chupacabra . . . with a handgun.” And the pest guy was all, “A chewpa-what?” Because HE’D NEVER HEARD OF A CHUPACABRA. Then I was like, “Wait . . . seriously? Are you new?” Because that’s exactly the kind of shit I expect my pest control guy to know. Then I called Victor and I was all, “Okay, our pest control guy doesn’t know what a chupacabra is,” and he said, “Really? We live in Texas. That shit should be on the exam,” and I was like, “EXACTLY.” This whole week is being a tremendous asshole.
My bedroom smells terrible. It’s been a week since all those awful sounds stopped, and it’s become obvious that the chupacabra has died in the wall. The exterminator crawled up in the attic and said he thinks it was a squirrel that fell into a hole in between the walls, and that he was going to try to “hook him” from the attic. After twenty minutes he said he just couldn’t reach him, so he gave up. He also told me there’s a bunch of dirt in the attic we might want to check out.
Then the next day another dead-squirrel fisherman from the same company came by, because he’d heard about it and he wanted to try to hook it. So basically my house is like a giant claw-crane game, and the prize is a dead squirrel. After about thirty minutes I started to suspect that he’d been murdered by the remaining chupacabras, but turns out that he’d just given up and dumped a bottle of Rat Sorb into the wall. That’s a real thing, y’all. Rat Sorb. To absorb the smell of dead animals. That’s on the label. So apparently I just live with a dead squirrel in my bedroom wall for the rest of my life. The exterminator says this is very common and that all houses have desiccated dead animals in their walls. On the positive side, the next time I feel intimidated at a fancy dinner party I can remind myself that there are probably dead animals all over the place. It’s like when you have to speak in front of a group and so you imagine them all naked. Except that the dead animals in the wall aren’t imaginary and are actually naked. I can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse.