Pests

I am on a mission to make my house as pest-free as possible.  This will be my mission for the next 2 years, if I don’t go crazy before the end of this.  Here are all of the pests that make me feel crazy:

Cockroach – they are huge and so gross, but manageable with cockroach chalk. I outline my walls with the chalk & as soon as the cockroach walks over the line, it dies. I am also very good at killing them with a cane knife

Frogs – Most people back home don’t know this, but frogs have pretty big poops – and I hate finding them in my house.  Occasionally I will find a frog in the bathroom, there was one in the kitchen this week.  I don’t kill the frogs b/c it would be to squishy and messy, so I just sweep them outside with the broom.

Mouse- I think there was a family living in my house before I moved in – so far I’ve killed 3 out of 4 family members.  I am waiting to get the last one out of the house.  This mouse is smarter than the others.  When I moved the fridge to clean this week he scurried out and behind the cabinets. This really gets my goat because it will somehow get into my silverware drawer – so then I have to clean everything out all the time.  The mouse is making me waste water.

Mosquitoes- They will be the death of me, I will probably die from too many mosquito bites. Luckily I have screens on all of my windows, mosquito coils, and spray  - all of which take care of the inside vectors.  But whenever I go outside I have to have repellent on or they are on me like white on rice.  The nurses at the school where I work are worried because I get bit in the day time & those mosquitoes carry Dengue fever and elephantiasis…..I do not want to bring anything like that home from Fiji!

NASTY!

Ants-  The ants may make me the craziest of all.  When I first arrived I did not have any ants in the kitchen, I was so happy!  Then one day they appeared.  I have asked them to leave, killed them, washed away their home, but nothing works.  Last night I SCRUBED my kitchen down with bleach water to try to get rid of them, but they are back again this morning. I hate them so much, they crawl on my hands – I’m starting to feel phantom ants…always smacking my arms b/c I think I feel one.

Yesterday after work I was looking for a treat to have before I made myself some dinner.  My wonderful sister sent me a bag of my favorite cereal (Strawberry yogurt burst Cheerios), so I went to grab a handful only to discover ANTS.  They had somehow gotten into the locked Tupperware and into the bag of Cheerios.  I was devastated! I looked at the bag and knew I had to make a decision….so I opened it up, put it on a plate and began sifting out the ants.  I wasn’t going to let my cereal go to waste, especially since you can’t find anything remotely close to that here.  So I sat for about an hour, transferring non-ant covered O’s into a ziplock bag.  I’m not going to let the ants get me down!  So this event is what triggered me to scrub my kitchen with bleach…but apparently that doesn’t work, so if anyone has a good solution for me I’ll take it!