Jerry Zejima (opinion): Solve the bug

Most people will tell you that flies don’t hurt, especially in the winter when the insects vacation in Florida. Not my wife.

Even though I’m the biggest pest in the house, Sue never tried to hurt anything else, including me, but she doesn’t like flies.

Or ants. Or a spider. Or the winged invaders and creepy crawlers that haunt us as the weather gets warmer.

That’s why we had exterminators visit not once, not twice, but three times.

The first person is Sam, short for Samantha.

“I’m the only female exterminator in the company,” Sam told me. “We broke the glass ceiling.”

“Can’t insects get in through broken glass?” I wondered.

“Yes,” Sam answered. “That’s why I’m here.”

“My wife is the only female exterminator in our family,” I said. “She’s always wandering around her house with a fly swatter.”

“People don’t like bugs,” Sam said. “The best way to get rid of goats is to set traps around the house. The bugs will get in there and die. It will also prevent them from laying eggs, which will produce more bugs.”

Sam set traps in the kitchen and garage. She also sprayed the outside of the house, including the windows, and also sprayed the shed.

“What bugs do people hate the most?” I asked Sam.

“Aren’t they uncles?” I asked.

Sam looked like he was about to spray me.

“Check the traps,” she said. “If you find another bug, please call me.”

Sue, who has a better bug antennae than most of us, soon found a spider in the kitchen.

“I’m calling an exterminator,” she said.

I didn’t tell her, but I saw another spider in the bathroom. She gave me Willie because she was scared of running into me in the shower. I imagined being bitten in a sensitive area, being rushed to the hospital, and having the following exchange with my doctor:

Doctor: “It’s quite small.”

Me: “Listen, sir, I didn’t come here to be insulted!”

Doctor: “No, I mean a bite.”

It also conjured up images for me of a famous scene from the 1957 science fiction classic The Incredible Shrinking Man. There, a man, ironically shrunk to the size of a bug, is attacked by a giant, hairy, hungry spider twice his size. He remains as he is.

When I first saw this scene as a child, I couldn’t sleep for a week.

I told the story to my next exterminator, Ron.

“Spiders are actually good because they eat other insects,” he says. “I think the worst ones are cave crickets and German cockroaches.”

“There aren’t any caves around here, but every time I complain to my wife about something stupid, crickets always come out,” I said. “I didn’t know cockroaches could speak German.”

“They can’t do it,” Ron said. “But they cause people to use bad words.”

Ron did the necessary spraying and left.

A week or two later, I found a housefly in the kitchen. I broke it with a fly swatter, but I made the mistake of telling Sue, who I thought would be proud of me.

Instead, she called a bug company.

Our next exterminator, Steve, said third time is the charm.

Like Sam and Ron, he sprayed the perimeter of the house as well as the windows.

“I’m sure there aren’t any bugs in your house,” I said.

“I live with my parents,” Steve said. “And I have a 3-year-old daughter. If she’s with her mom, she’ll scream if she sees a bug. If she’s with me, she’ll squash it and say, ‘Look, daddy. “I killed a bug!” She wants me to be proud of her. ”

“I’m killing bugs at home, and my wife will be proud of me,” I said.

“I think she is,” Steve said. “But you mustn’t eat anything after this.”

“Even if that happens, I’ll be the biggest pest in the house,” I said.

Jerry Zezima, a Stanford native, writes a humor column for Tribune News Service and is the author of seven books. His latest work is “The Good Humor Man: Tales of Life, Laughter, and for Dessert, Ice Cream.”