Sam and I fought the maggots, while Blair fought a war of her own.

Last night, I came into the family room- I had just finished listening to Freakonomics and drinking a warm cup of Milo- to discover our new problem. Maggots. Maggots are probably one of my top ten biggest fears. I saw a movie when I was younger where there was some man that had maggots coming out of his ears. Maybe it was a nightmare, or both.

Sam bravely ventured onto the porch (he followed the trail) and found the source, a garbage can full of rotten fruit. Thanks for whoever did that. So he bravely, for lack of a better word, picked it up to take it downstairs and there was a big fat pile of maggots. (sorry if this blog is making you sick. It makes me sick thinking about it again.) After he ran it to the garbage pile downstairs (let me take a quick moment to emphasize that it literally is a pile. We throw it into this bushy/grassy area and some guy with a handcart picks it up twice a week), we discussed how we would battle these creatures.

This is when I became a 9 year old cub scout. My brothers would be so proud. All those days of burning worms on the way to school finally paid off. Not only were we fearless, but creative too. First, we used DOOM which kills flies and basically anything that lives. But not maggots. Then, we used all the bug spray we could find the house. I even soaked one of the maggots in windex. It just moved a little slower, but squeakily clean towards our apartment door. Oh and there was salt too. They seemed to like that.

That’s when Sam had an epiphany. Matches. Sam went out onto the porch equipped with his headlamp in hand and a dust pan to begin scraping them into a pile. I became the regulator. I used my Ribena bottle (just like Koolaid, black currant flavoring..soo good) to keep them in the pile. After many dramatic moments, the maggots blended in very well with our tile which caused a lot of gasps, we were ready to roast. We doused them with all sorts of bug spray, corn oil, DOOM, etc. You name it; we tried to soak them in it. Then we lit it on fire.

But I didn’t feel like a 9 year old cub scout yet. It was when we soaked the metal door frame with bug spray and lit it on fire that I felt like a cub scout because we had not only killed the bugs we saw but we attempted to kill those that could be.

Meanwhile, Blair, as previously stated, was fighting a battle of her own. We have turned into sugar obsessives here. She found a recipe for microwave brownies and as we burned the maggots we could smell the delicious scent of chocolate coming from the kitchen.

We finally rested after our fight with the maggots (which are still sitting in a bug repellent, corn oil covered pile on our porch) and chewed on the sadly burnt microwave brownies. It is also sad that I still loved them. They may have been burnt but they were so good and gave us courage to try again. And that’s all that matters.