Our bathroom is being overrun by silverfish. The most hated of all fish which walk on land.
Silverfish have always been a problem, ever since we purchased the house. Let’s just get THAT out in the open right here, shall we? They were there from the beginning. Longer than us, actually.
So I heard this thing on public radio about how to get rid of silverfish. Ya see, they eat starch. You’ve got to hand it too these little vegetarians. They live on starch and like dark moist places (no comments, please!), so it’s a natch that they’d hang out in our windowless and, up until recently, exhaust fanless bathroom. And they eat that little toilet paper dust. That’s like silverfish caviar. They love tissue and books and the tops of Q-Tips and those things that we keep in the bathroom. Kudos to them that they found their perfect environment.
So the public radio guy suggests making a mixture of corn starch and BORIC ACID. He also suggested that if you had pets, you should make a little silverfish tea bag by wrapping up this mixture in a loose-weave piece of cheesecloth. He said this like it was no big deal, too. I do not have cheesecloth in our house. I do not MAKE cheese. I buy it, prewrapped and preferably presliced. I don’t know anyone under the age of 50 who has cheesecloth just lying around the house.
I dragged Esteban to Menard’s to purchase the Boric Acid. The NPR guy had sworn that this was a “common household chemical”, which in our house was about as common as the cheesecloth, so it didn’t seem strange that I had to go buy it. But here’s the thing, when we find the Boric Acid, it’s with the insect poisons. And the smallest jar, which is “cow killer” size, has a big ugly picture of a ROACH on it! We searched and searched for a jar with a picture of a silver fish on it, but to no avail. Esteban wanted to ditch the whole mission at that point because he didn’t want the 16-year-old cashier thinking that we had roaches in our house. People knowing that we’ve got silverfish is ok, though.
We toughed out the cashier and brought home our boric acid and promptly forgot about it. Because the nature of silverfish is to be secretive and insidious. They don’t WANT you to see them. You might make a killer tea bag and then where would they be?
Have you ever noticed that you never see little silverfish carcasses around? That’s because the little buggers live for 2 YEARS, people. 730 days or longer is the lifespan of the much hated silverfish. Such a long lifespan for a creature that cannot walk in a straight line, only ellipses.
So we were pretty much living in a symbiotic relationship with the silverfish for awhile. You know, we left tissues on the floor in the bathroom, spilled water on the floor to make them happy. And they made us happy by not showing their wicked little bodies to us. And all was fine.
Until a predator entered the picture. You see, apparently, there are a lot of silverfish now, or at least so many that a CENTIPEDE noticed them. Because out of nowhere, Esteban finds this crazy looking centipede in our bathroom.
Have you ever SEEN a centipede? They have these incredible LONG fucking legs that are just going every which way! And they sting, too. And they are, if possible, even faster than the silverfish. Plus, they move in straight lines.
Esteban smushed the Centipede, but then a few days later, I see one in the kitchen (which shares a wall with the bathroom). So they heard about the silverfish banquet to be had in our bathroom, and I believe they’re coming in like retirees with Early Bird Savings coupons.
Part of this, Esteban believes, is my fault. It has to do with that “bathroom cleaning” thing discussed in earlier entries. You see, there is some unwritten law which divines that Weetabix shall clean all that is not Kitchen. And truthfully, I’ll admit that I haven’t been cleaning the bathroom as much as I should. At one point, I made a moritorium which stated that I would not scrub the bathroom floor again until we got new tile or linoleum in there. Because I just can’t get it clean. We thought that part of it had this dark design in the rosette things and then after a frenzied scrubbing attempt on my part, I realized that it wasn’t a design… that was just the weird imprinting in the floor FILLED WITH GRIME! And I do not have enough anal retentiveness within my soul to scrub that fugly linoleum one more time.
Anyway, last night Esteban was reading a book that had been in our bathroom, on top of the book stand, which sits a few inches above the floor. He’s happily reading and suddenly says “GAHHHHHH!!!!” and starts crushing the book together (MY book, I might add! Which I’m on page 117, halfway through!).
“What! What?” I say.
He sneers at me. “There was a silverfish in the book.” and then proceeds to litanize on how this is my fault. Because the bathroom is, of course, ALL THAT IS NOT KITCHEN and therefore my responsibility.
And now there’s a smushed silverfish inside the book I haven’t read yet. If it is beyond page 117, I might just throw out the book and buy a new one. Damn Esteban!
Anyhoo, if you have a “good riddance” scheme for silverfish, centipedes, (or even lazy, occaisionally gender-biased husbands), send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.
Or send me a small, hankerchief-sized square of cheesecloth.
