So amidst the mopping and dusting and pie baking and meat marinating, I rumbled the green bin out to the front yard and noticed all the little white carbuncles growing on the lilikoi vines that cover our trellis and windows. Fungus? Disease? I poked one with the handle of the rake and it fell off too easily. I picked at one with my fingers and it gave a compliant little pop of release. My trypophobia shuddered gratifyingly. So I popped a few off in my hand, tried to get a close look, realized I've become blind within 12 inches without reading glasses, squinted at them from a distance, and suddenly knew I was holding something evil. Possibly alien. Definitely going to crawl into my ears and burst out of my orifices in the middle of the night.
So I brought them inside, of course. The teenager hauled out his crappy kiddie microscope and we looked at blurry blobs for a while before packing a few up in specimen jars to take to the high school science lab.
Then I did the worst thing I could do: I googled it. Do an image search for "barnacle scale", and then barricade your door and prime the flamethrower.
The next day, as I sat eating my meal bar and flicking through soothing Instagram pictures of fair-isle knitting and misty landscapes, my son texted me an image, and my screen filled with the larvae-filled underside of an insect carapace at 500x magnification. "Definitely a bug," he wrote. My phone and hands combusted.
Going to battle with gloves, a ladder, and a bandanna knotted around my face. None of these little fuckers are going to use my insides as an incubation chamber.
So I brought them inside, of course. The teenager hauled out his crappy kiddie microscope and we looked at blurry blobs for a while before packing a few up in specimen jars to take to the high school science lab.
Then I did the worst thing I could do: I googled it. Do an image search for "barnacle scale", and then barricade your door and prime the flamethrower.
The next day, as I sat eating my meal bar and flicking through soothing Instagram pictures of fair-isle knitting and misty landscapes, my son texted me an image, and my screen filled with the larvae-filled underside of an insect carapace at 500x magnification. "Definitely a bug," he wrote. My phone and hands combusted.
Going to battle with gloves, a ladder, and a bandanna knotted around my face. None of these little fuckers are going to use my insides as an incubation chamber.
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