Insect Scares on Elsinore Street

I’m amazed I’m not more of a panicked horse than I am, considering my upbringing. My parents have been running around all night releasing room-filling pesticide bombs and stuffing their clothes into black plastic bags because my mother discovered a couple mysterious bites on her leg. (“Lice!” they initially screamed, until I pointed out to them that lice do not attack hairless ankles and do not leave mosquito-bite-sized welts.) Just now they were scuffling outside my door because my mother had squashed a frightening new bug. I opened the door to my mother’s disgusted wails and my dad’s frantic exclamation: “Snake!” I kid you not, it was a little black inchworm, a less-than-an-inchworm curled and dried up like a denigrated shrimp. Now my dad is interrogating my mother on whether she has washed her hair today. “The smell of oil is very strong,” he says.