House "Guests"

I’ve mentioned before that the houses here are very “open concept.” Well, one of the side effects of having so many cracks and crevices is that small creatures can easily make your home their own. Our garage opened right into the house, and there is a good gap under the garage door, as well as slats, which made it easy access for these little guys. We have found at least three cockroaches in the garage. My husband puts a poison in front of the garage door, which usually kills them soon after they walk across it.

It’s been a lot harder to kill ants. There are tiny ants, which are here, there and everywhere, but those don’t really bother me. Then there are the big ones. Probably twice as big as the ones I’m used to seeing and they bite! Having young children in the house makes me extra vigilant about attacking these guys. It’s hard to even know where they’re coming from. We have been waging war on them, and sometimes we seem to be winning, and then a whole army of them invades! Thankfully, they seem to be at bay at present.

Our other household “pet” is the house gecko. They are very shy, so we don’t often see them. But they wander around at night. They are quite harmless, but I am a little annoyed at them for not doing a better job at keeping our ant population under control!

The worst guests (read pests) are the rats. One night when my son and I were away, my husband caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He did a double take, because he knew he was alone in the house. Even though the opening under the garage door wasn’t huge, it was big enough for the nasty little critters to sneak through. He got traps set up and one night we caught one at 10pm, reset the trap and got another one in the middle of the night. We finally hired someone to put a door on to close off the garage from the kitchen. (Although we don’t own the house, we’re leasing, so all repairs/improvements fall on us).

You do what you can to keep these outdoor critters … well … outdoors. But at the end of the day, you just can’t let the little things get to you … no matter how annoying they may be. We can’t control everything in life, but we can control our attitudes. God can use even “creepy crawlies” to help us learn these lessons!