Insects and Hurricane Katrina

Its 8:15 pm.  I'm waiting for my dinner to finish cooking.  Savory bread pudding.  I made it because i finally made bread again!  But then the bread didn't turn out *quite* as tasty as i'd hoped, so i decided to cook it in a pot with other good things, and it'll all taste great.  Stomach grumbling in anticipation of dinner, and my toe grazes a wire underneath my desk.  FREAK OUT BECAUSE THERE'S AN ENORMOUS BUG ON ME!  No, upon investigation we learn:  it was just a wire.  Sigh.  My reflexes are...changing.  Every little tickle or sensation becomes a potential scenario for waving hands and swatting oneself uncontrollably.  Because if you don't investigate what is touching your foot, then sometimes you look down and there IS an enormous bug crawling up your leg.  The other day i put my shoes on and thought, "what did i put in my shoe?".  It was, of course, an enormous freaking cockroach.  So there's obsessive sensation-panic, and there's obsessive checking clothes, towels, furniture, bedspreads for any crawling/flying/spineless thing.  Becoming attuned to the tropics (er, well, subtropics).

This all might sound a bit overdramatic, but - there's no escape, and no one is immune.  Everyone has the gigantic cockroaches, in their house, every day.  Like my landlord said:  its not like there will be a time when you don't see them.  Just know when to worry.  When to worry is when you start seeing little ones:  then it means they're breeding inside; otherwise they're usually stray from the outside.  How do they get in, you wonder?  Because the house seems hermetically sealed, due to the crushing heat that happens every day.  They get in when you open the door for a moment.  They get in through the drains (shudder).  But i'm hoping to make peace with them, and find some balance of living with the insects, and but also willing them outside.  Unfortunately for them, i think this means killing them sometimes.  In the case of cockroaches, it does.  I'm not sure what people do, who won't kill cockroaches.  Just the thought of them running around all over my dishes and clothes and toothbrush - it just sends shivers down my spine.  Maybe i need to just buck the hell up, and deal with it - its just an insect!  its not even poisonous! - but for now, there is an extermination system in place, for when they're inside the house (note:  if i find one inside the house, and i can catch it, i do try to keep it alive and put it outside).

Another note on invertebrates:  i am continually amazed by the numbers and variety of insects and spiders i see and hear, here (here, here!).  So far, i've seen, in addition to the cockroaches: millipedes, 3 or 4 kinds of wasps, bumble bees, 3 or 4 kinds of butterflies, moths, hummingbird moths, cicadas, fire ants, flies, mosquitoes, 3 kinds of spiders, and beetles.  Mostly, there are bugs that i can't identify - especially the wasps and the beetles.  There are also lots of flying insects that i'm not sure of their ID.

In other news, i've been reading a non-fiction book about Hurricane Katrina - one survivor's account (and she relays stories from several of her friends) of being in the storm on the Gulf Coast, and the aftermath.  Its absolutely riveting.  I can't put it down - even with the mountains of schoolwork i have.  The book is:  Under Surge, Under Seige - by Ellis Anderson.  My landlord gave it to me to read; she's one of the friends who shows up in the book.  I want to know all the stories.  And now, visiting some of the places she (and other people in their storm stories) are talking about - the stories become all the more poignant and striking.  And, the stories are utterly heartbreaking.  So much loss.  How does one individual cope with so much loss?  How does a community cope?  Then, in with the loss is amazement and gratitude for people helping each other, people managing to survive despite the (very-stacked-against-them) odds.  One thing is very clear:  my hunch that Hurricane Katrina is a benchmark around these parts was spot on.  There is not a single person who hasn't been affected by the impact of the hurricane, and the aftermath.  Next up on my reading list is a book about Katrina in New Orleans:  1 Dead in the Attic.  Two things i've enjoyed so far in the book:  people saying that "Hurricane Camille killed more people in 2005 than in 1969" and Katrina was "The Great Equalizer".  The former refers to the previous worst hurricane in Gulf Coast recorded history - Camille.  People thought, "me/my house/this neighborhood survived Camille; it can't be worse than that", and so they stayed or didn't otherwise take necessary precaution, and it was WAY worse than that.  The Great Equalizer is that everyone was affected.  The richest man in Hancock County, disheveled and waiting in line to get a bag of ice.  The mayor, house demolished with nowhere to go.  Everyone, rich and poor, educated and not, privileged or not - everyone was the same to Katrina.