By Karen Galatz in Reno, Nevada
I know Passover has passed, but I’m living through a series of personal plagues. They’re not Biblical in proportion, but for mere mortal me, they’re epic and loathsome.
Of course, good Jewish wife that I am, I blame my suffering, not on God, but on my spouse. You can appreciate my faultless logic. He, my spouse, not God, dragged me away from civilization — Berkeley, California, land of museums and theater — and moved me to the godless wilderness of Reno, Nevada.
The plagues began in rapid succession:
First were the wildfires. The packing boxes weren’t even unpacked. The pictures had not yet hung.
And this was not only sad, but also ironic. We moved to Reno in part to escape the constant threat of wildfires in Northern California. Yet, immediately upon moving to Reno, I learned that — thanks to climate change and reduced snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Lake Tahoe — Reno now faced frequent wildfire threats. In fact, our neighborhood had been evacuated just the year before when a wildfire had come perilously close. I learned all this while squinting out the window at the obscured orange sky. Thanks, honey, for the great move!
Since then, we — rather, I — faced one particularly frightening alert in which I loaded the car up with prized possessions and sat staring at the phone for hours, waiting for a Red Flag evacuation notice, which happily did not come when the winds shifted. My husband was out of town, of course, and missed all the fun.
Plague Number Two: Gnats!
That same first summer bug-phobic me found that a cloud of gnats had descended upon my beloved houseplants, buzzing and multiplying in alarming and disgusting proportions.
Now, I am, in general, a houseplant queen, a woman with a green thumb. I’m not so good at raising children —ask my children. Wait, better you don’t. But in terms of indoor plants, I’m a regular horticultural Thumbelina. Blossoms and blooms everywhere. That is, I mean, that was UNTIL we moved to Reno and the gnats took up residence.
I tried every trick the Internet offered. I tried “natural” remedies, including a multi-week watering drought, yellow sticky traps for adults, treating larvae with hydrogen peroxide, and adding something called neem oil to the soil. I tried “unnatural” remedies, which meant all sorts of toxic chemicals.
I removed soil. I added soil. I tried everything in the Gnat Kill book, but nothing worked. Finally, I tearfully tossed plants into the trash and, after a period of sitting shiva, bought new houseplants.
Plague Number Three: Snakes!
To be precise, rattlesnakes. Our tiny, gated community became ground zero for a rhumba of (adult) rattlesnakes and a pit of snakelets (baby snakes), too. These are true technical snake terms. Trust me. I’m now a certified snake-ologist, I mean, herpetologist.
Of course, that’s what you get for leaving the verdant San Francisco Bay and moving to the dusty Wild West — rattlers and a whole new vocabulary!
The poisonous critters bit a couple of neighborhood dogs, which wound up at the vet but luckily survived. A couple of big snakes were corralled, but more were sighted.
I happily never saw one, but the mere thought of a rattling rhumba put a rapid end to my neighborhood morning rambles.
Plague Number Four: Caterpillars
Not “cute” little wiggly ones, but massive monsters appeared everywhere … on the streets, on the driveways, up the walls, and into garages.
It was an infestation of yes, I’ll say it, Biblical proportions, one that lasted weeks, and drove the neighborhood and exterminators crazy.
The marauders were so big they made crunching sounds when scrunched under car wheels. It made me want to run for the hills (past the rattlesnakes) back to Berkeley, or better still, back to my true home country, NYC!
Plagues Five, Six, and Seven: Floods
Not outside, but inside!
We have a sump pump downstairs. Not uncommon, but our downstairs isn’t some sad, moldy, uncarpeted area. No. It’s a pretty swanky space (if I do say so myself) — complete with carpeted office, guest room, den, and tiled bathroom.
But oh, that sump pump! Oh, any sump pump! Always a recipe for disaster. Ours flooded. Not once. Not twice, but three times. Thanks to faulty something or other, ours leaked sewage onto the hall and den carpet, and bathroom tile, three times!
The damage was so extensive each time that it eventually led to the cancellation of our homeowners’ insurance policy (which should be a plague upon the insurance company).
The only graceful thing I can say here is that thankfully, we didn’t contract a bona fide plague from all the nasty sewage seeping into the house and air.
Plague Number Eight: Flies
For two winter months, in one concentrated corner of our house, by two warm, sunny windows, we had swarms of flies. They were not the usual buzzy, fast-moving flies, but big, BIG, slow-moving ones.
They made their first appearance on a day when my husband was, you guessed it, out of town. Berserk, bug-phobic me, swatted 14 of them. Combat vets would have been awed by my kill numbers. I was nauseous.
An exterminator took pity on hysterical me and came right over. He surveyed the carnage and diagnosed the problem as “corpse flies.”
The bug man said the big bugs are attracted when “something dies.” Like a bat. A rat. A mouse. A raccoon. With that diagnosis, he crawled into the attic but failed to find a “feeder source” for the flies. He left. The flies remained.
The next day, our contractor came over and shimmied around the crawl space, but he couldn’t find anything either.
Still, the flies flew and sunned themselves on the windowsills. Finally, with Spring, they disappeared. The reason for their appearance in my otherwise balabusta-perfect home was never solved.
Plague Nine: Gnats Redux
I cannot win. The gnats have returned tenfold! I’m getting rid of all my plants and going artificial. I’m officially anti-green, pro-plastic. Sorry, Mom Nature.
Plague Number Ten: Pending
What’s next? I know not. Is there a negative version of “Dayenu?” Something to stop an overabundance of the yucks? If so, can someone let me know ASAP? Please save this harried and harassed Hausfrau — and her marriage!
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You can read more of Karen’s work at Muddling through Middle Age or contact her at karen@muddling.me. Shortly after finishing her column, a 5.7 earthquake hit outside of Karen’s hometown. No injuries or damage to anyone in the area, other than shaken nerves, and just this week, a second earthquake struck, registering 4.73.