Cohabitating With Critters

As I have mentioned before, I am currently living in Fehr's, our SBFM house in Paia. As much as I love living here, I do not like the critters that we often find living among us. Our house is a bit dilapidated and there are plenty of unseen openings that the critters can come in through. This sets us up for some interesting adventures with critters and a losing battle in trying to get rid of them.

Cane Spiders
When the nearby cane fields are burned, cane spiders invade our house. They are pretty freaky looking with small bodies and long legs. See the picture to the right. They can often be as big as a hand. Cane spiders move very quickly, which makes them difficult to kill. I don't mind killing them but I get a bit jumpy when they suddenly scurry away. Sometimes I lose my nerve and make my roommate kill them for me.

Ants
We also have tons of tiny ants that seem to appear from nowhere. They have invaded our microwaves, refrigerators, and counters so thoroughly, that we barely even pay attention to them anymore. I just stick my oatmeal in the microwave amidst the hundreds of ants, who by the way, don't seem at all affected by being nuked in the microwave. All day and night, I find lone ants crawling on me. Thankfully these ants don't seem to bite too much and are easily killed.

Centipedes
Another commonly seen critter in our house is the centipede. These painful spawns of Satan like to lurk in our bathrooms and bedrooms. My friend, Shannon woke up to one on her while she was asleep. Thankfully she didn't get bit but she did wake up her roommates when she turned on the light in the middle of the night. I watched a 4-5 inch, fat brown centipede wiggle out of my room as I stood frozen in horror. I was so startled that I didn't even try to kill it and let it just saunter out of my room. I recently killed my first one- a tiny blue guy intruding in my bedroom. They are hard to kill because you have to chop them into bits.

Rats/Mice
My least favorite critters (as if I like the others one bit) are rats/mice. The ones that live in our house are very bold. There is a tiny mouse that runs around our lecture hall even in the middle of class. It's hard to pay attention when there's a mouse frolicking among our sandals. One night, I watched a mouse (who I didn't know was visiting)  run out of bedroom. I don't want mice around but I also don't want to kill them. I am not some huge animal lover but for some reason, the idea of killing an animal with blood and fur creeps me out.

Plan of Attack
Our guys are good at killing critters when they are around but they tend to be absent during most of the critter visitations. They have also set several mouse traps without much success. Having all these uninvited guests makes me feel violated. One big cause of all these critters is the fact that my bedroom door has a 3-4 inch gap at the bottom that pretty much any one of those critters could fit through. This means that even when my door is closed, I am not safe. I have rectified the situation by taping three sticky traps to the bottom of my door to create a barrier between me and all the creatures who want to come in. Unfortunately, the first day I set this up, a mouse ran in while our door was opened and therefore trapped inside with our new sticky trap door. Definitely not what I wanted to happen. I am not even sure that my barrier works but it does make me feel a bit safer.