The Inevitability of Spring and the Hellish Bugs It Brings with It

My back door has a small gap at the bottom. It’s an opening the naked eye can’t distinguish when carrying as many bags of groceries as humanly possible inside. It’s not even big enough for a dandelion seed to drift and float under. Year after year I assumed the door was perfectly flush with the frame—not too big where it’d scrap against the floor and not too small where a draft would sweep into our house, freezing the soft green pea soup in our kitchen.

But then, last year happened.

It was an especially bad year for dandelions. I’d spend hours on my hands and knees, blistering my soft, keyboard hands with the handle on the spade—and even though I pulled pounds of weeds out of my yard, more blossomed and mocked my efforts. The weeds kept growing, but most nights I could turn on the mind-numbing TV shows that allowed me to forget about the yellow flower and while ball of puffy seeds expanding across my yard. I watched the screen and forgot about the army of dandelions sprouting.

Last year wasn’t just bad for dandelions. No, it was also bad for earwigs. The most hellish bug that I’ve encountered in my life.

Are they particularly dangerous? No.

Are they harmful in any substantial way? No, of course not.

But do the stories of them harboring and breeding deep in the caverns of my eardrums haunt my dreams? Yes.

Did one crawl up my freshly showered body and pinch me in the shin while I toweled off a decade ago? Yes.

Do they look like the most vile and evil creatures god ever decided to bestow in earth’s soil? Yes.

When my son was probably three years old, he hid a plastic dart for a toy gun inside my parents’ hose house. After weeks of it missing, I found it. I was excited to give it back to him, but my hands were full, so I put it my mouth like I was puffing on a giant stogie. I loaded the car, and before I threw the dart in the back, I thought I should tap it out in case there was any dirt in the hollow cylinder. What did I witness fall out of this small plastic toy that I’d had firmed clasped between my lips? Four writhing earwigs, their sleek black pincher butts reflecting the summer sun, almost taunting me for what they could’ve done (which, I suppose is crawl in my mouth, but even the thought of that sends a shiver up my spine). I’ve never wanted to vomit more in my life.

And so, last year wasn’t the year of the dandelion, it was the year of the earwig. I had to deal with these hell beasts crawling under the gap in my back door and scaling the walls of my kitchen, the stairs to my basement, and all over the floor—hiding amongst the linoleum, somehow knowing my cats were too useless or scared to do anything about them.

I had to wage war.

I scooped and smashed them under mounds of toilet paper, tissue, and paper towels. I’d use so much I wouldn’t feel the crunch of their bursting exoskeleton bodies between my fingers. I needed as much distance as possible. When I saw them burrowing into the soil of the majesty palm my wife kept in our dining room, I knew the war was over. They’d won, but maybe if I waited them out it’d all be fine. Winter would kill the ones outside and I could manage the meager population that was living in the dirt in my house. I’d bide my time and reign victorious.

Only, they never rose from the soil. Winter came and went, and I haven’t seen an earwig in my house for six months. I can’t imagine—or pretend not to think about it—how many earwigs are waiting to burst forth from that soil to overrun my house. To disrupt the small amount of equilibrium I’ve achieved over the past year.

What the fuck are they waiting for?

What are they planning?

I need to know, but I don’t want to find out.

Either way, I’m going to have to find a balance and not think too much about the hell bugs that are slowly colonizing my house. These bugs have likely created a home in the dirt—with kids and families all living their lives in the warmth of our house—so who am I to really destroy that? Instead, I need to find the right show on TV that will numb my brain enough that I don’t think about how many earwigs have procreated in my dining room. Something that will allow me to shut off my brain and relax.

Tonight, I saw the first earwig of the year. It was outside, near my back door. I was going out to shut the sprinkler off, and I saw it scurrying across the pavement. I stepped over it, hoping it’d make it to the grass and choose to live its life there, in the comfort of the vast soil available to it. I thought, maybe this year will be different than last year. Maybe it won’t be the year of the earwig because they’d choose to live in the safety of the outside.

I picked at the scab on my palm from the blister I had earlier in the week. It was the first blister of the year. I’d spent hours this last week ripping pounds of dandelions out of the grass.

The dandelions are bad this year and it feels like they’re only getting started. 

Joseph Edwin Haeger is the author of the experimental memoir Learn to Swim (University of Hell Press). His work has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, HAD, X-R-A-Y, The Inlander, and others. As a litmus test, he tells people his favorite movie is Face/Off, but there's a part of him that's afraid it's true.