We are midway into October, and Halloween is upon us, which means the current list of available television movies is filled with creepy, crawly things, and worse! Vermin! Knowing how much I despise vermin, I instead flipped through my list of saved shows. Voila! Three Indiana Jones movies! They are always safe bets, fun and not scary, plus, bonus, who wouldn’t want to watch handsome Harrison Ford take his shirt off? I was following along, happy with my viewing choice, until it happened! Rats, snakes, and alligators! I was burdened not only with vermin, but my two other worse fears, snakes and alligators!
Tom, my University of Florida Gator-fan husband, would kill me if he heard the part about alligators. I kept that hidden from him for 53 years of marriage! But I couldn’t hide my fear and loathing of vermin. They scare me worse than a Halloween field of screams! And, while I am at it, let me also mention worms! While I have been known to attach them to fishhooks, I didn’t want to eat the fish, because it had just eaten a worm that might be still slithering around in its gullet.
And even though I know they serve a purpose, I’m not fond of other insects either. I guess anteaters and fish consider them gourmet tidbits, and maybe exterminators see dollar signs at the sight of bugs but not me. Of course, lady bugs are cute and useful as they eat aphids, another bug, which attacks my roses. I guess spiders are useful for something in the food chain, since there are so many. But they freak me out, too, especially when they appear somewhere they shouldn’t, like in my slipper or in my dirty laundry basket. I guess spiders have one redeeming quality, as E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web,a book about a spider, made the author a ton of money, so there’s that.
Most animals have some logical use, cows give milk, sheep have the wool thing going for them, goats are really good for cheese, chickens give eggs, and turkeys donate their lives so that I can enjoy Thanksgiving. But the creepy crawlies and vermin really make me queasy. What in the world was God thinking when those were created?
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