Gross Story!

It's been kind of a busy day.

I woke up around 4:30 a.m. or so--after getting to bed around 1:00 a.m.--and had breakfast and so on. I wanted to get my errands done early and then spend the rest of the day inside, dodging the heat.

At 7:00 a.m., I was in Walgreens, just me, one other shopper (that I saw) and a lone cashier. I wanted to buy some travel stuff and a hummingbird feeder. You know, just your average Walgreens shopping list. I spent about forty-five minutes looking around and got almost everything except the hummingbird feeder.

Here's why I need a new hummingbird feeder:

I'll warn you, this is a gross story.

Our current feeder leaks. I usually put a cup of sugar/water in every other day because it drips out slowly onto the ground and bit of bricked-in walkway below. The feeder hangs just outside our front door and, last night, when I went to let one of the cats in, there were about fifty or more enormous, black cockroaches feeding on the sugar that had leaked out of the feeder. It was completely disgusting, like something out of a horror movie.

I never, ever use insecticides, but we have some under the sink (the bottle is about six years old and I bought it when the black widow population was getting out of hand). I put on some nitrile gloves, got out the insecticide and went outside to spray the amassed roaches. When the first spray hit them, they ran in all different directions away from it. I kept spraying them until they had all disappeared, then I lifted the front doormat where about twenty of them were hiding and I sprayed under there, too. It was awful.

Finally, I put a box over the spot where I had sprayed because the cats sometimes lounge around there and I didn't want them to be laying in insecticide.

This morning, there were a dozen or so dead or dying roaches out on the patio. (I imagine some of them ran off to die in less conspicuous spots.)

I moved a couple of plants that have seen better days (since the grasshopper population went nuts) to the spot I sprayed, partly to keep the cats away from there, partly to catch some of the dripping from the feeder.

But the better solution would be to replace the feeder.

Anyway, after Walgreens, I went by the Co-op for a few things, then I came home and put everything away and started in on my chores.