Storms

Dawn announced, "The storms will be here in ten minutes." This immediately set off a panic because right now we're using the back porch as storage, workshop, and trash bin, and since it isn't currently covered, a storm generally means twenty minutes of running around putting everything away. Luckily, Dawn clarified herself before I made it to the back door: "The storm windows are coming."

We ordered these several months ago, but it took a while because we have 64 windows, and every one of them is a different dimension. We bought one-piece interior storms so they didn't obscure the look of the old windows, plus they have screen inserts so during the spring and fall we can actually open the windows without being deluged by insects. And believe me, on a farm by a creek there are a lot of insects.

In the mid-80s, California got spooked by the fruit fly and so sprayed (by helicopter) all of Los Angeles with malathion. As a result, LA has no insects. An occasional fly, perhaps, and some mosquitoes and little black ants, but that's about it. And while I think spraying an entire city with poison was a stupid thing to do, I have to say: I didn't miss the bugs. We'd take walks at night, or sit on the patio, or go stargazing in the hills, and never even thought about bugs. That's just how I grew up.

So imagine me one night about four weeks ago, up late working in the attic with the lights on, and I look out the dormer window and it is covered with insects: small gnat-like things flitting about, bright green cricket-type things, moths as big as my fist, and a myriad of other insects I couldn't even describe (and would prefer not to remember).

So you'd think I would have learned that lesson pretty quickly, but you'd be wrong, because the next night I was testing my wireless Internet connection and so I took my laptop outside to see what kind of signal I was getting. Imagine me, in the pitch black, in the middle of a field, bathed in the glow of the laptop. Now imagine me sprinting, in the pitch black, across a field, trying to shut off my laptop while a hundred billion bugs swarm around me. That's when I learned my lesson.

We did use this to our advantage one night, though, when I turned on some halogen lights on the front porch and was immediately surrounded by moths. There also happened to be a toad on the porch.

We fed the toad.