I noticed the other day that they had returned. Almost like magic. The cold starts to go away, and the earwigs start to come back.
I can’t say I like them. They certainly don’t look friendly. At times I have sprayed around the house with various concoctions, including soapy water which does seem to deter them a bit. I have even made traps. Blocks of wood with little channels cut in them. They crawl in, can’t get out and you can dump them into even more soapy water, which they seem to hate.
I’ve got nothing against them. But they do tend toward the creepy side of creepy crawly, what with the big pincers and all. And then there’s the thing I have only seen once, but it happened, and I can’t forget it. They can fly.
I tell people that and many don’t believe me, but I have seen it. Usually, they can find enough to eat where they are and tend to stay within walking distance. But I have seen them fly.
It was a few years ago. I first thought maybe it was an ant day. You know ant day. One of those days when ants sprout wings and fly around. Usually the big carpenter ants. Fish and birds seem to like ant day, since they like to eat the ants and ants are not really great flyers, so they end up in places that allow for easy eating. But these weren’t ants.
It looked sort of like a big cloud, floating on the wind. I noticed it coming and made sure doors and windows were shut, because you really don’t need a bunch of ants running around indoors. I didn’t think much more about it until the cloud had passed. That’s when I noticed it was not ants. It was earwigs.
They seemed to be in every crack and crevice you could imagine. Earwigs were everywhere. Maybe they ran out of food. Maybe they got tired of other people spraying them with soapy water. Whatever the reason, they had come flying in.
They aren’t great flyers, which may be why they don’t do it often. But it can still give you nightmares. Great hordes of insects, equipped with nasty looking pincers at both ends flying in your direction. Not a pleasant thing to see.
I’m glad it doesn’t happen often.
