Just as every Spring of the year signals the arrival of ladybugs, and June heralds the arrival of…well…June bugs, each May sees the resurgence of what we call water bugs. What they are in reality are very large cockroaches, each of them measuring between two and three inches long. Yuck! We tend to encounter these bugs in the dead of night in the kitchen or the bathroom. Yesterday afternoon I encountered our first water bug of the month of May; this encounter was my “fuzzy towel” experience.

As I reached into a bathroom drawer to retrieve a towel, I felt a strange tickling sensation at the ends of my fingers. I was grasping the towel and my fingers were being tickled. As the feeling began to register in my tired “late-afternoon” brain, I glanced down, and caught a fleeting glimpse of flailing insect limbs. Legs were furiously pedaling around the vicinity of my hand. Ah, the tickling feeling was coming from…AHHHHH! I dropped the towel – quickly! Giving my hand some frantic shakes, I ran out of the bathroom screaming.

I didn’t “have to” scream, but it did help. Sometimes a scream is needed to express the “yuck factor” of a situation and to restore an inner equilibrium in the affected individual. My scream did just that. It also alerted the rest of my family. My husband quickly came in and dispatched that water bug post haste. Oh, the bugs of Spring!