Steve McQueen and Friends

Yesterday one of my friends asked me if I was ready to go back to the U.S. to which I replied, not necessarily. While I’m anxious to see my family, most of whom Dave and I haven’t seen since at least August, I just returned from a month’s visit in Philadelphia on December 1^st, and wasn’t feeling the normal need for a break from the unique challenges that present themselves while living in Ghana.

This morning that all changed.

As is customary, my first stop in the morning is the restroom. As I sat down, I glanced into the tub and saw three bugs….more accurately….larvae. Hmmm, I thought. Yesterday there was one of the same types of bugs in the tub. I picked it up with a Kleenex and flushed it down the toilet, never thinking twice about it. As I continued with my business I thought about where the bugs might be coming from, and I concluded that it must be from the bathtub drain. As I wasn’t planning on going to the gym this morning, I went back to bed to just stretch and wait until Dave was ready to go to work.

When he came into the room, I told him to check out my bathtub. He looked at my quizzically, but then did what I asked. He came back and said, “There are bugs in your bathtub.” I said, “There are three bugs in my bathtub.” He said, “No. There are five bugs in your bathtub.” I quickly jumped up and went back to the bathroom and discovered that Dave was wrong. There were SEVEN bugs in my bathtub.

We were scratching our heads, discussing where the bugs could be coming from, and I was convinced they were coming up through the drain. I already had a plan developing in my head whereby I would dump a bottle of bleach down the drain, determined that anything and everything that was even considering joining us would die first.

As we both stood there watching the bugs being washed down the drain, a bug dropped into the bathtub! We immediately looked up but didn’t see anything unusual. I had some lingerie hanging on the towel bar and wondered if maybe one of the little buggers had climbed the wall and snuggled into my bra. I shook the clothes out, but nothing dropped. Just then, another bug dropped out of the sky. Again, we looked upward. Just then, we watched as one of the larvae wiggled out of a small hole at the juncture between the baseboard and the wall! I don’t know what the baseboard is called when it is placed up on the ceiling, but here’s a picture of the area in which they were coming out. They were dropping out of the ceiling about halfway between the wall and the window.

Over the next several minutes one after another larvae twisted their way out of the ceiling and into our bathtub. There must have been 20-25 of the squirming maggots in our tub. As we were both just staring at the ceiling, shocked at what we were witnessing a bug dropped….onto the other end of the bathtub. We turned our heads and discovered the larvae hadn’t just found one hole, they had found two!

At this point I was freaking out! I told Dave he was NOT leaving for work until he had closed up those two holes. So, as I attempted to keep the bugs corralled in the bathtub (they were actually crawling up the sides of the tub trying to escape to greener pastures), Dave went in search of something…anything with which to plug up the holes, at least temporarily.

He returned with masking tape and a can of Raid. He first sprayed the holes with the insecticide and then waited for the area to dry. While we waited, all the while staring intently at the ceiling, another bug made his way out of the hole…and then another one, and then another one. Raid wasn’t anything to these guys!

Dave bravely climbed onto the tub with masking tape in hand, coughing as there is no ventilation in the bathroom and we weren’t really thinking “safety first.” He quickly, but with much deliberation, used the masking tape to cover the area between the wall and the baseboard all around the ceiling above the bathtub.

As we both stared into the bathtub at our new “friends,” and I gagged because they STINK, we looked at each other, shook our heads, laughed, and then  I said, “I wanna go home!”

Newmont has a Site Services group for which Dave is responsible as VP of Human Resources (go figure how that relates in any way to HR, but nonetheless). Anytime there is a maintenance issue with our house, I have a list of contact names and I’ve mostly been the one to contact them for help. Before Dave left I asked him….no wait, I strongly urged him to personally contact someone in site services as soon as he got to work so that the issue would be given top priority. It’s amazing what the initials V.P. after your name can do for you.

Dave quickly agreed, so I know he was as freaked out about the problem as I was. I kept saying, “What if this would have happened tomorrow after we’d left for the U.S.?” I just keep thinking that my house would have been infested with the larvae. Dave did a little online search once he arrived at work and we think these would have morphed into adult cockroaches!

Steve McQueen, you ask? Well, in addition to this latest unsettling company, we’ve endured an ongoing battle with what we think are rats in our attic, which I’ve written about in a previous blog. Unfortunately, the monthly throwing of bait into the attic is not keeping the rats at bay. Almost every evening we can hear them running around above our heads as we watch TV, read, and oftentimes…as we are sleeping. The other night I SWEAR it was a small child running from one end of the living room to the other.

We originally nicknamed the rat(s) Randy, but that has since changed after watching an episode of “House” where Greg House and his ex-wife are hunkered down in her attic in an effort to trap a pesky mouse. Pfftt…mouse? I’m WAY over mice! I’m onto RATS! Anyway, Greg named the mouse “Steve McQueen,” and we hastily adopted the name for our rat(s). The last time the pest guy came over to throw the bait into the attic we discussed the fact that bait is only temporary as rats are famous for having “colonies,” and only move on when they no longer have access.  So, we are also working on getting someone over here to trim the enormous, gigantic treesm as they apparently climb them at night to get to the roof. Dave had an even better idea! How about eliminating the holes in which they are getting  INTO the attic! Ah ha!

My husband does NOT like bugs. Snakes and lizards don’t seem to bother him.  Even the rats haven’t affected them the way they disturb me. However, the larvae squeezing out of the hole in the sealing sent him over the edge. Dave has yet to contribute to this blog, but I’ll leave you with a copy of the email he sent to Franklin, who is his guy currently in charge of Site Services:

“One more issue I forgot to mention.  In addition to the larvae and rodents in the ceiling, the roof also leaks which may be contributing to the insects hatching in the attic.  The roof leak has been “repaired” twice, but we still have water coming into the house whenever it rains. To summarize, I suspect you’ll need to trim the trees to keep the rats from getting on the roof, seal the attic from the outside to prevent rats that can jump from the trimmed trees from entering, poison the rats that manage to leap from the trimmed trees and  somehow force their way past the sealed attic, fix the roof so rain water doesn’t promote insects from breeding in the ceiling, spray the bugs that are already in the attic, and seal the ceiling from the inside the house (where the larvae wiggled through) to keep the really hearty bugs from getting into bathroom. I’d say you’ve got your work cut out for you!”

I wanna go home.