Pest Control

The recent few days of rain have brought upon my bunk in camp a whole new breed of nuisance. 1. They shouldn't be new to anyone and I'm pretty damn sure no one likes them. 2. They are black and they swarm in great numbers, 3. sometimes they even stink! 4. You can't really see them at night unless they are under a bright light source. Now let's do some mind reading, ME reading YOUR mind. What I'll do is to try to reconstruct your train of thought. I've carefully crafted this list into a paragraph, no line breaks, such that it appears to be only a chunk of text. When you read the first sentence, you have mentally prepared yourself to be bombarded by me whining a lot, rendering this sudden mind reading "thing" a sudden shift in pace and totally unexpected. After reading 1, you've more or less established that I'm going to bitch about something and/or someone that is commonly seen in Singapore. At 2, my emphasis on the word black led you to brainstorm for things that are of said colour that are common in Singapore. These "things" are a common sight in Singapore. At point 3, you've confirmed to yourself that I hate the subject to the core and they do not smell good. Point 4 only furthur enforces point 2 leading you to think that the fact that the subject is black is of great importance. And indeed it is. Knowing me and my "pseudo" racist nature, plus your in born racism, you would probably come to the conclusion that the subject is a minority group in Singapore. The fact that one of the reasons for this nuisance is the rain these few days would have completely slipped your mind for 2 reasons, 1) it's not numbered as a point, 2) you led too far off track to remember. If at this point, you still do not know what I'm getting at, I'll be kind and spell it out for you. You think I'm talking about Banglas!

You are wrong, I'm actually talking about those fucking flying ants that are really becoming a pest these days, not that they weren't in the past, they're just more of a pest now. If you want to see an insect graveyard, kindly proceed to Band B bunk 1. The floor is littered with bug carcasses. I was in bunk watching TV, minding my own business refusing to care about the lesser intelligent critters making their way into the room. It was irritating but tolerable until about 7 plus in the evening. That's when the sun just set and the lights in my bunk transformed into homing beacons for those fucking bugs in an instant. One minute I was watching TV, the next I'm up on my feet swatting those fucking bugs off my body.

I was at the apex of my irritant meter, that's when I decided to do something about the bugs. It took a while but it was well worth the effort. The bugs stopped bugging me for the rest of the night more or less. As suggested by my use of the word graveyard in the above paragraph, the bugs that pissed me off died, perished. I will now impart onto you, the gift of how to get rid of those bugs.

You must first stop the bugs from coming in, close all the windows doors in the room, make sure no new bugs can come in. But what if some of them want to get out? you say. I say we kill them else it won't be fair to those that will definately die from pissing me off. At this point, you will notice that even though they are equiped with wings, they are not great in the flight department, they are after all ants, so get a cloth or simply a dirty t-shirt, whichever is readily available.

Swing!
Swipe the cloth at anything you see airborne. Even if the cloth doesn't hit the flying fucker, the displaced air will cause the weak flyers to get grounded for a while. This is crucial as most of the little fuckers WILL still be flying around.

Stomp!
Step on those fucking things, they crunch and ooze fluids sometimes, this is the most basic and fastest way to kill them.

Drown!
Pour water on them so they stay grounded, struggle and exhaust themselves to death. They might drown too.

Boil!
Get a mug of boiling water and pour a little of it on those grounded fuckers. They die in an instant. No ooze.

Freeze!
This is not as effective as boil but it's an alternative if you don't have a boiler but got a water cooler around. Bugs are cold blooded meaning they take the temperature of their surroundings. They are more lethargic when they are cold hence easier to kill. This can also be a follow through action for boil if the bug is hardy and didn't die from boil. This hot-cold combination would most definately finish it off.

Soap!
This is great if you see bugs in the bath. works on cockcroaches, the hardiest of critters. These fuckers can round around headless for 2 weeks before they die, or so I was told. If it works on roaches, it works on any bug there is. This is best achieved with liquid soap, more commonly known as shower foam. Shampoo works damn fine too. Use drown on the big to keep it grounded, then squeeze some liquid soap on it, be sure to completely cover the abdomen area at least. That's where bugs breath from, their ass. This way, the liquid soap will clog up the breathing holes suffocating them at the least. If not, the soap will get into the bug's system and poison it. Soap is also more viscous than water making it impossible for the bug to break away with flight.

Now back to mind reading. I'm writing this here because some words in my explaination above are tools used to mislead you. When you look at this page, what catches your eyes would be the bold yellow words, that is your first impression of what I'm writing about. Cheers.