Bug Showers

Today I walked into my room to find three girls screaming from the showers. An enormous centipede had come out of the shower spout on to a roommate mid-shampoo session (to clarify: mid-freezing cold body-clenching shower experience). There was a time when I feared small spiders. Nothing was worse than spotting a quarter sized eight-legged creature from across the room.

Now late at night I sit in bed and suffer through the chronic apprehension of insect attack. Mosquitos and spiders are the least of my worries, although the tarantula is still surely on my radar here. Each day the old volunteers and employees enjoy regaling to us a new type of bug, watching us squirm and ask if that species could possibly be real! One type of bug burrows into the skin of your scalp, lays its eggs under your hair follicles and happily departs, leaving you with a glowing taut infection of bug eggs on the head. Only an intense milking of the larvae will rid you of birthing them via hair follicles. This type of bug, the scorpion and Dengue Fever mosquitos terrify me: I live in constant fear of what tiny terror will be my downfall. But it gets worse...I would think that I would only find in scientific fiction a bug that engorges on a chunk of your face skin, defecates on the wound, which YOU then unknowingly scratch into the wound and infect yourself with a parasite. This parasite does not cause typical digestive problems, nor does it cause immediate side effects. This parasite waits SEVEN to TEN YEARS inside your system to finally spring heart disease on you! Fortunately you can get tested for the parasite if you have a large bite on your face...so I do not plan on death by heart disease by age 33.

Never fear: I am well-equipped with bug spray, a nurse as a roommate, an on-site clinic and an intense dedication to ward off any insect looking creatures. The other night, I definitely leaped out of my top bunk in the dark (headlight securely on), sprinted across the room and destroyed an enormous spider with my handy (and apparently multi-purpose) Spanish-English dictionary. Part of me was quick to the offense because my roommate was in a panic after spotting it in the shadows, but also it creeps me out to imagine these creatures crawling over me while I innocently dream of chocolate.

Perhaps I have learned my true calling. Hailey the exterminator.