What’s Grosser Than Gross

Joelle said in the early morning on August 29, 2007

Disclaimer: This entry could totally give you the heebs.  You have been warned.

Yesterday mid-morning, after a client phone meeting, I walked into my kitchen to get some coffee, but stopped in the ‘dining’ area to open the window. I noticed along the baseboard, far away from any food or garbage, a bunch of writhing, wriggling white things.  I moved back the curtain and to my utter HORROR — maggots. Everywhere.  Several dozen.

  So. Gross.

My house is clean, my floor was swept, but I have had a housefly problem lately. It seems like every time I go in or out of my front door, a couple houseflies sneak in. Every day I find dead flies in my bathroom or on my window ledges.  Even when they’re busting against the front screen to get out, if I open the door to let them out, two more fly in. It’s a no-win situation.  Granted, it’s been super hot this August and from what I’ve read online, it’s not uncommon for houseflies to lay their eggs in a cool, dry place, like someone’s apartment.  I don’t know why under my window was the right spot, but lo and behold… there they were.  I guess I should be lucky they didn’t get into my kitchen or somewhere else…

To say I freaked out is an understatement. I totally flipped out.  Totally.  I had no bug spray (and the Internet said, for the most part, that it wouldn’t work).  I didn’t know how to stop them, so I started squirting them with 409 multi-purpose cleaner, hoping to drown them or slow them down long enough for me to go buy some kind of industrial killer, but it just made it worse.  They started to haul ass up the wall and out across my kitchen tile.

I should mention I have no central air and the morning sun was beating down on me through the big kitchen window.  So, I’m standing there in a tank top and underwear, semi-hysterical, near tears, sweating buckets, trying desperately to stop an army of maggots from invading my kitchen. (And, eventually, in a moment of total gross-out, I took off my tank top, thinking I had a maggot on me, and was running around trying to clean them up in just my underwear… in front of my wide-open kitchen window.  I completely forgot that I was topless, so uh… Maggie and Alfred, my kindly English neighbors across the street?  I do apologize.)

GFI wasn’t home and after calling my good friend mikey about 30 times, begging him to “Bring me something! Anything! I’m so GROSSED OUT!”, to no avail (he was in the shower when I called). I finally decided I needed to sack up and handle it myself.  So, I corralled them with 409 and paper towels, scooping them up, giant paper-towel wad by giant paper-towel wad, shuddering and squealing and “ick!! ew ew!!"-ing the whole time.

My first brilliant plan was to flush them down the toilet, but my hysteria caused me to forget they were paper towels and in a building with 1955 plumbing, that’s no good.  I plugged up the toilet with maggots and select-a-size Bounty.  JOY.  So, needless to say, that was the more pressing issue for a while.  After dealing with that, I got some paper Trader Joe’s grocery bags and dumped the ick-wads into those instead, then took it all down to the dumpster, far, far away from my apartment.

I finally ridded myself of them.  I feel I have to reiterate that my place is clean, I swear! I emptied every ounce of trash in my place, though there wasn’t that much, I swept, I deodorized, sanitized and practically performed a smudging before I was satisfied that they were gone.  I’m still paranoid. Every hour I walk my kitchen, scouring the Tuscan tile for ANY sign of even one, but I’ve not found any since then.  Yesterday, I bought a fly strip and a venus fly trap and totally went all mercenary on the three or so houseflies that managed to sneak in yesterday.  I made the mistake of reading horror stories online while trying to figure out how to get rid of them, so now I’m decidedly paranoid.

I still love my apartment, but do I live in Amityville or what?  I am so over bugs.  Down with houseflies!  Bring on Autumn!