Bugged

How many gnats does it take to knock me off my feet?

I don't know the answer and, frankly, I don't want to know. I'm just glad they're gone. Well, mostly. After two hours of cleaning this morning, I'm still seeing occasional dead gnats tucked in around the edges of everything, but that's nothing like the swarm that descended last night.

We've never seen such a swarm in our house before (or outside either) and this one arrived with particularly poor timing. I hadn't seen my husband for nearly two weeks because of our overlapping AP/conference schedules, so I was sitting in the living room reading while eagerly awaiting his arrival. I guess my reading lamp right near the front window attracted the gnats to the front porch, so that when I saw my husband's car drive up and opened the front door to greet him, the gnats rushed through the door like a curtain of creepy-crawlies falling all over me.

It was startling. I'm not afraid of gnats but then again I've never had that many attack me at the same time, so some shrieking may have occurred. And then of course there they were all over the house. I don't know if you've ever tried to repel a swarm of gnats inside your living space, but it's no fun at all. Flyswatters and bug spray are required. It would be great to have some full-body hazmat suits, but alas, that's not part of our household equipment.

This morning we found dead bug bodies everywhere both inside the house and out on the front porch, where a large spider web held a solid curtain of little dead bug bodies. Earlier this week we had to complain to the neighbors again about their recalcitrant cow that keeps wandering into our garden, but I'll say one thing about cows: at least they don't come barging into the house, knock me over, and interrupt a passionate reunion. If they did, I believe I'd move someplace devoid of bovines and bugs. (Do you suppose there's any great need for literature professors in Antarctica?)