As was the case several years back, we are having an earwig infestation. Yuk! They are outside the house as well as in the house. Everywhere. I don’t mean by the hundreds, but we will see six or eight in the house in a day, sometimes more than a dozen. The other day we found six before breakfast — and four more soon afterwards! And you never know where they will show up. They are small, about the size of a large ant. And, as you can see, they are ugly bugs; they are insidious. They appear in or under coffee cups, on (or in) your toothbrush or hairbrush, in cupboards, on walls, on the floor or counter. A friend of ours found one in her child’s sippy-cup straw just before her child was about to take a drink of her milk. You lift a plate and they crawl out; you open a cupboard and they are sitting on the edge of your dinner plates; you pick up an item of clothing and they drop out (if you are lucky). They scurry quickly when the light goes on and they do bite, or pinch, I am told. I am also told they got their name from the fact that they hole up in people’s ears while folks are sleeping. I don’t know whether this is a fact, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They are plentiful and they are very unsettling.

These creatures are most abundant during warm and wet seasons, like the one we are having at present, and they like dark, damp places. But, as mentioned, they appear everywhere — and always, it seems, when least expected. It does make one tense and wanting to be somewhere else.

They put me in mind of the creatures that Donald Trump has exposed by turning over rocks and allowing ugly bugs to escape and multiply. Many come heavily armed, and they are angry, stupid, and they want to hurt. Trump’s creatures, of course, are much more dangerous. The earwigs don’t kill (as far as I know), but those inspired by the rhetoric of one of America’s greatest salesmen are capable of pretty much anything. One really cannot predict. Like the earwigs. They are there; they make us tense and wanting to be somewhere else. Moreover, unlike earwigs, you can’t simply flush Trump’s bugs down the toilet — sad to say.