Termite Hunting

I can’t figure out what to do with my life so I sit at home and wait for bugs to crawl out of the wall. Well, the windowsill to be precise.

For a couple weeks I’d noticed this weird pile of small light to dark brown balls each a little bigger than a grain of sugar arranged in a symmetric circle about half a centimeter tall. The first time I didn’t think too much of it, and cleaned it up with an old sponge. The balls sort of stuck to the sponge and to each other and rolled around into out of reach places so I couldn’t pick all of them up.

The next day the pile returned in exactly the same spot. I wondered if my head had finally checked out. But no, the remnants of the previous day’s clean up still hid in the crevices. The pile had not cleaned up well with the damp sponge so I tried to get it up with a dry paper towel. It swept up easily and made it to the trash just below.

I was perplexed. What could be making this odd little mountain of brown pellets? Some sort of insect, I thought. I looked above the pile to see if anything could be falling from there. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. I looked all around where the pile had now twice materialized and still saw nothing.

For a couple days I ignored it. I was working all the time and had a friend visiting. Part of me wanted the pile to reappear while he was there to prove that I wasn’t going crazy and someone else could see it, too. Of course, the pile didn’t come back until after he left. And the third time it wasn’t much of a showing--just a few of the little pellets and not nearly enough to form the mini rounded mountain—more like a small rock slide.

Still I swept them up again. This time, though I noticed a hole. Perfectly round and dark against the white of the new kitchen window sill, I can only guess that I assumed it was a nail or screw before. Now that I looked at it carefully, the black round thing definitely had depth to it. A hole in the middle of the weird pile? Hmm?

So by this time I’m so stressed about work and the neuroradiologist telling me that he wants to take the clots out of my head that my headaches are back and they have me scared. I sit in my darkened apartment for a couple days worrying about my head and making it worse. I’m sick sick sick of having to think about being a doctor and having stupid lupus-related brain clots that I thought would go away with the months of blood thinning medication but clearly have not. The patients with lupus and strokes dying in the ICU become too much for me and I tell the residents and chief about my headaches and they let me leave. I feel guilty that I’m not working. I feel confused about what to do with my future. I read “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

I can’t decide if I want to endure suffering of medical training when I have other options. Frankl calls that “simply masochistic.” Is my calling to be a doctor and keep trying to finish this program? Or if I don’t use my education and gifts will I feel that I’ve wasted my life? Even if I do write, how many people will read what I write? And how many of those will it truly touch and change? That’s why I chose medicine all those years ago when my literature professors tried to talk me out of it: because it gave me a better chance to help people and understand them and, as Wadsworth or Thoreau or someone says if you make suffering less for one person then life has meaning.

Or if I should stop now and work in any clinic I can, as a general practitioner, not board certified and still afraid that I won’t know enough. Or does having a crisis of faith about medicine’s wisdom makes me perfectly unsuited to be a doctor. I have trouble believing that doctors have the answers. In fact, I know we don’t because we can’t fix my head. And really, do I want to work this hard? And so, I sit at home waiting for bugs to crawl out of my wall, or windowsill, to be precise.

Eventually they do. I’ve deduced by this time that something must live in that perfectly round hole. And then I see the antennae. Ah hah! And then it drops out one of the round tan balls that rolls a little on the windowsill. The culprit. “Now this,” I congratulate myself cheekily in my empty studio apartment, “This is a good use of my time.” At least it makes me smile, but that reminds me that smiling aggravates the clots and the headache returns to the left temple for an instant before I banish it with the power of the mind.

I rush to the other room and get the needle driver out of one of my drawers. What I really needed was one of the small angled tweezers we use to dilate belly buttons in the premies to insert umbilical central venous or arterial lines. I probably have one buried in my other random instruments but I didn’t have time to look in that moment. The antennae might disappear and if I can get their owner this mystery (and the little pile) will be finished. Mission accomplished, or so I hoped.

Alas, the antenna retreated despite my attempts at stealth. I decided to bide my time and make some lemon bars while checking back periodically to see if the adversary decided to show his face around here again.

The scent of the lemon bars must have driven him back in. I decided to do some yoga. It stimulated all the joint fluid, according to the DVD instructor on my computer. And somehow that made me have to micturate (aka pee). I got up to do that and came back to find a winged insect on my turquoise yoga mat. Interesting. I retrieved the needle driver from the kitchen and took the bug outside with my flip flop to squish it on the pavement there. I felt only slightly guilty about killing it. It looked sort of like a winged ant. I am not fond of ants.

I finished yoga and decided to do the dishes. Soon I would run out of all of these meaningful activities and have to fester again in my guilt about not being at work and thinking if I ever wanted to go back and searching for meaning. I decided to put on some music to drown out those thoughts even more. The singing hurt my head so I mostly listened to it softly. I learned all the words to Jens Lekman’s “You Put Your Arms Around Me.” I didn’t understand them fully until the next day when I realized the lyrics talked about him slicing off his index finger.

I kept checking back on the windowsill though. And finally, I saw it! This time half of its body was out of the hole. The antennae wiggling still; it had failed to sense the danger I presented. Fool! It looked like it had wings still folded up and trapped in the hole. I hurried to get the needle drivers again and grabbed his thorax to pull him out. Success was short-lived. As soon as I put him in the trash, more antennae appeared. Hours of entertainment, I assure you.

The next bug was reluctant to come out, so I again bided my time like the patient hunter I had become.

I went outside to talk to Angel and his brother, the maintenance men who had come to put in my neighbor, Joseph’s, new window. Joseph had forgotten to move his bed out of their way. He had left for his dad’s house with his laundry a couple hours before. His dad lives at least half an hour away. I called him to see what he wanted to do about the window. Eventually, the five of us decided rescheduling was best. I brought Randy, Angel, and his brother lemon bars to celebrate our successful important decision.

I cornered Angel to ask him about my bug problem. He was wary as soon as I said, “Hey.”

“No complaints!” he teased, “Especially about the windows.” He had installed my living room window a few weeks before. I learned then that he has thirteen brothers and sisters; he has green eyes, despite being Mexican; and he hugs his mom even though she pretends she doesn’t like it.

I gave him an abridged version of the bug saga and he found it amazing that I had time to sit at home all day and watch bugs crawl out of the wall, or windowsill to be precise. That’s me, Dr. Amazing. I feel awesome.

“They’re termites,” he identified them quickly.

“Really? Termites have wings? Then what are all the little brown balls?”

“Sure, they’re termites. This whole place is full of ‘em. And that stuff is their poop.”

“Eww!” I cringed, thinking of the time I touched it while wiping it off the windowsill.

“It’s just wood. You know the reason the walls still stay up at all?” The mischievous glint appeared in his green eyes and I loved life again for a curious instant. That was the meaning of life. That was real.

“Why?” I played along happily.

“Because all the termites hold hands.”

We smiled together for a few moments before I became practical again, “So what do I do about them?”

“Plug up the hole.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, they only come out once a year.”

“So next year I’ll have to do the same thing?”

“Yep. They’ll make another hole then.”

I see a long line of holes in my future. Which one holds the snake and which one holds the pot of gold? Apparently, they all hold termites. And my hand is too big to fit into any of them. And in all likelihood, I won’t live in this studio apartment at the beach for the rest of my life. Unless the clots get me and I die very soon, which is really my big fear right now and why I’ve been thrown into such a crisis of faith. And why I sit at home avoiding thinking about it by watching bugs crawl out of the walls, or window sill to be more precise.

Later in the evening, I still ruminated about the bugs eating my walls. By then my mom, her boyfriend and his mom, Loraine (who had washed my laundry and made me lemon cake before I’d ever met her) were enjoying sangria before my mom’s heavenly meatball-filled lasagna for dinner. Life was good then, even though I’m not supposed to drink with my medication. I conveniently forget the rules sometimes.

“We used to have termites, too.” Loraine shares in my recent obsession. “They were eating up the wood in the garage until I decided to spray WD-40 in their holes. I didn’t want to fumigate the whole house. And it worked.” As she’s saying this my mom’s boyfriend, Bernie, leaves and reappears a minute later with a can of WD-40 he places by my bag with a meaningful glance. He recognizes the hunter in me and supplies me with a new weapon. Not to mention that they all spoil me. They feel compelled to take on some of my “burden” and help me through my crisis of career and health and faith as best they can. Sometimes I feel guilty about that too. I must have been a devout Catholic in another life.

“Really?” I want to confirm this miracle termite repellant story. “How long did it take for them to go away?”

“Oh, I sprayed them every couple days for a few weeks. They never came back.” Loraine is a fellow huntress; she had time to sit around and watch bugs crawl out of her walls, too. At least I’m not the only one. A couple weeks, though. I’m not sure I can stare at them for that long.
When I get home later with a full belly, feeling satisfied and trying to suppress the guilt of eating too much, I get out the WD-40. No antennae appear at the moment. I take aim and fire, making a puddle of clear grease around the entrance to their lair. Satisfied with my day’s investigation and work, I retreat to bed feeling an unwelcome loneliness that tempts me to call one of my ex-boyfriends. But I remember why I broke up with each of them and refrain; I fall asleep trying not to think too much about anything.

By the next morning, the puddle of grease has soaked into the sill in the shape of an as of yet undiscovered continent, slightly darker and shinier than the virgin ocean of white sill around it. I see new poop balls, though. And later in the morning, I see more antennae. I find it more satisfying to pull out their squirmy bodies with the needled drivers so I resort to my original weapon of choice. I grab gently enough to not break the termite in half while I drag it out of the hole. Once out, I stare at it for a few seconds before clamping down harder on the small tool. Crunch. The insect still wiggles a little as I throw it into the trash.