The Mysteries Of Fall

The moon is full and a slight breeze rustles the turning leaves. There's a brisk chill to the Autumn air, and one's thoughts turn to... frogs.

Yup. Frogs. Or maybe they're toads. Who the fuck can tell the difference.

And I was just thinking "My goodness it's be awhile since we've had any pestilence or plagues" and now we have it... frogs.

The dogs found them first. Of course they would. I'd let them into the backyard last Thursday evening and a short while later heard some sort of commotion. When I went to investigate I saw my older dog rummaging around behind one of the patio chairs and he emerged with what I thought was a chew toy. He ran around in circles in the yard, thrashing his head back and forth before finally tossing it into the air. It landed with a dull thud and I went to check it out and that's when I saw it wasn't a toy.

Glistening in the moonlight was a hockey puck sized frog.

I looked at my dog, who was now drooling and frothing at the mouth like Cujo. I'm guessing the frogs defense mechanism is a nasty tasting slime which causes predators to give up while the giving is good. Unfortunately, dogs apparently have no short term memory, and before I knew it he was coming back for a second pass.

The frog was alive and intact, but more than likely a little stunned. I grabbed a nearby rake and covered the frog to protect it, and when my dog retreated I flipped the rake over and scooped up the frog and flung it over the fence into the yard of the now empty house next door.

But now the dogs are obsessed. The frogs drive them absolutely berserk. Leads me to believe there's something to that whole "getting high by licking frogs" urban legend. If they're let into the yard after dark, they immediately go on the hunt like pigs after truffles. They don't eat the frogs, at least I don't think they do. They're just after the high and the challenge. I've rescued about half a dozen frogs with my rake technique and I've really gotten quite adept at it. It's like "Frog Jai Alai".

Where do the frogs come from? Beats the hell out of me. I was under the impression they inhabited wetter environments and Bakersfield is a desert. The only bodies of water for 50 miles are the irrigation canals and I would think they had filters on them to keep the frogs from mucking up the works. And even if that is the source, the nearest one to the house is a mile away and across several busy streets. It just goes to show you you should never doubt the persistence of the pests of Bako.

The frogs magically appear only at night; where they go during the day is a mystery. Trust me, the dogs look for them. It's gotten so bad we now don't let the dogs out back after dark.

I tell myself "This too shall pass." I say that a lot here. They really should make that the city motto.

“So A Roach Walks Into A Bar...”

The exterminators were outside killing things, one hopes. The dogs and I were safely quarantined inside the house. After about an hour there was a knock on the door.

It was Chad, the lead assassin.

"So we dosed you pretty hard" he said. "Keep the dogs inside for at least half an hour and then you should be good to go. Should start seeing a lot of dead bugs very soon."

From his mouth to God's ears.

He then turned serious. "There was, however, one spider's nest in the garage we just couldn't get. I don't think we actually have anything strong enough to kill it. C'mon, I'll show you."

I was horrified.

He led me around the corner to the open garage and pointed to this...



Happy Halloween! I had forgotten it was there.

Chad doubled over with laughter and I admit I cracked up too.

Exterminator humor... who knew?

Chad and his accomplices were soon on their way.

Did it work? Too soon to tell.

"C'mere" said the boyfriend as he flipped on the patio lights last night.

Out on the concrete, scores of cockroaches were scurrying all about. True, it wasn't as bad as Wednesday night, but it still looked like a scene out of "Starship Troopers".

"I think it failed" he said. He seemed totally defeated.

"I don't know, honey" I said. "They seem a little more confused and listless than usual. Let's give it some time."

We did make it through the night without anything skittering across the bed, so that was one small victory. And we did wake up to a higher than normal body count, although not the killing field we had been told to expect. Certainly not enough to make much of a difference.

My fear is that the locals heavy reliance on pesticides has led to mutations that are now beyond the reach of man. Perhaps in the end, Bakersfield exists only as a Stephen King cautionary tale.

A Sight For Sore Eyes

The causes of the latest Bako funk were many.

Primarily it was work related. Business has been booming for the past four months. It's been quite the turnaround from 6 months ago and I am eternally grateful. Getting paid is another matter, but it is what it is. Several weeks I almost had more work than I could handle. Almost. But all that changed this week as we entered the summer doldrums. I wrapped up a huge job and had another put on hold. One of my clients is on vacation and I've yet to hear back on a couple of projects I bid on. All in all it's left me with way much free time. When I was busy I didn't have time to dwell on our current circumstances here in Bako, but this week is different and it doesn't make for happy times.

The second reason is the weather. We haven't yet crossed the triple digit threshold but we've been flirting with it all week. And as the old saw goes, "it isn't the heat, it's the humidity." How someplace that is essentially a desert can have swamp-like humidity is just one of Bakersfield's enduring mysteries.

And finally, the bugs.

The cockroaches have been almost unbearable and we reached our breaking point Wednesday night when the boyfriend flipped on the patio lights and a black sea of roaches went scurrying for the darkness. It was like watching the tide rush out and it was disgusting. More worrying than the roaches has been a new arrival... black widow spiders. They've been multiplying for weeks and some morning's the patio furniture is cocooned in their webs. I'm terrified to let the dogs in the yard fearing they'll poke their noses where they shouldn't and I'll end up rushing them to the vet. Wednesday night the boyfriend issued an edict...

"Tomorrow, you're calling an exterminator. Get them out here ASAP."

His preference was for me to call a local outfit, Banks Exterminators. Why? Because their commercials run constantly and they have an infectious jingle that sticks with you like a bad aftertaste ("Say Hello Banks, and Bye-bye- Bugs!"). I thought that was a dubious reason to pick a service, so yesterday morning, after I posted my sad sack post, I set about the mornings priority... finding an exterminator.

I had just Googled "exterminators Bakersfield" when there was a knock at the door.

When I answered it, there stood a Nordic god! A tall, blond, strapping young buck who looked as if he had just stepped out of an Abercrombie catalog, fresh off the polo field, or maybe lacrosse. He was half my age and ridiculously handsome. He was wearing too tight khaki shorts and an even tighter white polo shirt, which hugged his wide, well-built chest.

"Hi, I'm J.T." he said as he extended his hand.

I have to admit, I was taken aback. You don't often see attractive people here. Especially standing on your doorstep. I probably made a fool of myself like a lecherous old queen, but I just couldn't help myself. I kept staring at his...

Shirt.

Embroidered on the pocket it said "PEST CONTROL".

He started his sales pitch and I just said "Yes".

That seemed to take him by surprise.

"But don't you want to know about our specials?" he asked.

"Sure, whatever, can you start today?" I said.

It really seemed to throw him off his game. He had been trained to go through the whole spiel and was obviously not used to someone capitulating so quickly. He asked if he could come in and go over everything. Sure, why not. Did I mention he was ridiculously handsome?

He pulled up a barstool and I then proceeded to learn more than I care too about roaches and other pests. He confirmed one thing I suspected - the unusually long, cool, wet spring had made the normal roach problem here much, much worse. He also answered one nagging roach question I've had since we moved here. Every morning, particularly during the summer, we'd wake up to dozens of roaches seemingly dead on their backs. When you went to dispose of them you'd quickly discover they weren't dead.

"Yeah, they tend to flip on their backs at night to cool off" J.T. explained.

That's probably all you need to know about Bakersfield... too hot for roaches.

We filled out a contract and he explained they'd start first thing in the morning. And sure enough, they're here right now, going through their elaborate de-bugging routine. I'm so fed up with all the pests they could just go ahead and do an airdrop of DDT on the house and I'd be OK with it.

So hopefully we'll finally get a handle on the bugs. It's it looks like it's going to be a good 10 to 15 degrees cooler today. And I'm meeting with a potential new client later this morning. Taken all together, it appears to have broken the spell. This morning things are starting to look up.

Escar-GO!

Having evidently exhausted the Biblical plagues, it was definitely time for something new... snails!

Millions of them. Everywhere. Evidently that poor, distraught woman I crossed paths with back in April was a harbinger of things to come.

No one seems to know why we're under siege. Probably from the above average rainfall we've had this year. Whatever the reason they've been a major nuisance for the past month. In the pre-dawn morning, when I take the dogs out, the front lawn in nothing but an undulating sea of them. They slowly disappear once the sun comes out, going where I haven't a clue. But by evening they're back.

At first I tried to take a zen, more Buddhist approach to them. They're God's creatures too, after all. Now I just don't care. I actually took some sadistic pleasure in mowing the lawn on Sunday, zigzagging across the lawn in an act of snail genocide. We've tried snail poison, but it seems to have no effect. Like all pests here, they've probably become resistant to all the pesticide that's regularly dumped on the city. They've... evolved.

The worst part is now the dogs have taken an interest in them. Not eating them, not anymore. They learned that lesson last week, the hard way. I caught them both munching on them when I let them out in the morning, and they were not happy campers for the rest of the day. Now they just hunt them down and snatch them and toss them around. And they lick them. Why? Who knows. Maybe it's like licking certain toads and frogs. Maybe they get a little high. More power to them if that's the case. The way this week is going maybe I'll give it a shot. Anything to dull the pain.

At any rate, it's probably a temporary phenomenon. The forecast for next week is for more seasonal, thermonuclear temperatures and I'm guessing that will be the end of them.

The Princess And The Frog

In many of the posts I've written about the cockroaches, the flies, the maggots, I've made snarky allusions to Biblical Plagues. It was all in good fun, a joke. Really.

Or so I thought.

Last night I was taking the dogs our for one last little walk before we went to bed. As we walked back up to the house in the darkness the dogs both stopped to examine a big leaf on the lawn. My older dog nudged it with his nose.

And it hopped.

It wasn't a leaf. It was a frog.

What fun for the dogs! Something new to play with! Or eat!

It took me a second to process what was going on and then I quickly yanked the dogs away before they could rip it apart. But not before my little dog got in one big sloppy lick. I hustled the dogs inside and then called out the boyfriend and we both went outside to investigate.

Sure enough, a frog. It appeared there were a couple more lurking out on the lawn. I have absolutely no experience with frogs, but my understanding is they usually aren't found in the desert in the middle of summer.

We went back inside, and my poor little dog seemed to be in some distress. I can't imagine the frog tasted very good, but then we grew concerned that perhaps the frog was toxic, like the toads kids allegedly lick to get high. Or worse. This is Bakersfield after all, and there isn't a chemical or pesticide these people won't spray over the whole damn city. Maybe it was mutant?

So the boyfriend Googled "frogs in Bakersfield" and found this.

I don't claim to be a Biblical scholar, but taken together with the pests and the dust storms, it certainly seems like Someone is trying to tell them Something. For such pious people they sure can be clueless.

My little dog seemed to recover and we gave her some ice cream just to help get the taste out of her mouth. We started joking about her kissing the frog in hopes of finding her prince.

Sorry honey, but that's never going to happen, not here. This town is nothing but frog.

Roaches, And Maggots, And Flies, Oh My

It's been quite awhile since I posted a vermin report. It's not that the situation has improved - far from it. But the bugs ultimately just wear you down and render you numb to the pestilence. Flies are just an unfortunate fact of life when your town is surrounded by millions of acres of cow shit. And the roaches? So common they aren't even worth noting anymore.

It's a Bako thing.

Up until recently I still harbored some suspicions that perhaps we just lived in a roach-y part of town, or just imagined our neighbor Mary was some slovenly hoarder and it was all her fault. But then I started this job and I've noticed every morning when I come it that the hall leading to my closet is littered with dead roaches. There's usually a few under my desk too. They aren't all dead mind you - just last week I was in a meeting with my boss when out of the corner of my eye I caught a gargantuan one making it's way to a corner of her office. It's all I could focus on and I ended up tuning her out. I nodded my head as she babbled on and I watched as it disappeared behind the polyester curtains. Now I don't know what I was supposed to be working on this week.

But as long as it's been since I've written a roach post, it's been even longer since I had a brand new plague to report. They were coming fast and furious in the first months we lived here, the roaches, and flies, and killer dust storms and the swine flu. But then things leveled off and the flaming rain and raining frogs never appeared and everything appeared status quo.

Until this morning.

We returned this morning from three days away for the birthday festivities to a whole new breed of house guests:

Maggots!

All over the kitchen floor and entryway. Where did they come from? No fucking clue. What were they there for? Ditto. The trash had been taken out before we left, so there was nothing there for them. They appeared to just be lazily sunning themselves on the "fine Italian marble tile©". It reminded us of that scene in "Poltergeist" with the steak. The boyfriend fled and left me to sort it out.

I ended up flushing the whole lot of them because I was pressed for time. If I hadn't been in a rush to get to work I would've figured out how to get them over the fence into Mary's yard. This being Bako I'm sure I'll have many more chances.

We, of course, had our plagues in LA too, but it was pretty much limited to the hoards of D-list celebrities and Eurotrash that descended like locusts on any newish club or restaurant. I guess it could be argued that there isn't much difference between a maggot and an Olsen Twin, but all things being equal I know which one I'd rather be scraping off a floor.

It’s A Third World After All, It’s A Third World After All, It’s A Third World After All, It’s A Third, Third, World

I did quite a bit of traveling when I was younger, and I've done my share of camping. I'm not a prima donna when it comes to bugs. But nothing prepared me for the pestilence of Bako. Given the choice between Botswana or Bakersfield, I'd have to go with the former. While the bug count would probably be comparable, I'm guessing Botswana at least has some native culture and charm.

We've resorted to doing a nightly bed check, shaking out the sheets to try and find the roaches before they find us. It's pointless. Almost daily someone is jolted awake in the dead of the night by little disease laden feet skittering across bare arm and legs. Even the dogs aren't immune and my oldest has deserted the bed and now sleeps in relative safety on the floor.

And our old friends the flies are back. I'd almost forgotten about them, or blocked them out of my memory to try and maintain my sanity. But there back and now they come super-sized, horseflies the size of bees.

We're under siege from the land and air; what the hell could possibly come next?

"Bakersfield bed bugs gain national attention."

"Man Says Motel Bed Bugs Eating Him Alive"

"Bed Bugs Biting Bakersfield RV Park Residents."

And to think people live here by choice.

Not A Creature Was Stirring, Not Even A Roach...

Well, that's not entirely true. Because out in the kitchen there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter.

Roach.

Big one. Size of a pack of smokes. It must be their king.

The dogs were trying to play with it, so I made quick work of it.

Flush away! Flush away! Flush away all!

But I suddenly realized the roaches have been making themselves scarce lately. It must be the cold.

Do roaches hibernate? I'm still kind of new to the whole "biblical pestilence" thing.

The Princess And The Fog

Coming from Hollywood I know a thing or two about hype - I used to help manufacture it. So all the dire warnings about the coming "fog" were easy to dismiss as overblown. I'd lived at the beach, I'd experienced dense fog, it wasn't such a big deal.

WRONG

On the news it was described as "mild" and "patchy".

Holy Mother of Pearl. I opened the front door to take the dogs out and couldn't see past the doormat. The dogs ran out... and vanished. Thank god they were on leashes otherwise they'd be gone for good. I ventured out as far as the front lawn... I think. Hard to tell. It was like having cataracts. Only one street light was visible and it looked like a distant star. The dogs freaked out and came rushing back in. Did they do their business? Who knows.

And this was "mild"?!?! Yikes.

I'll give Bako this - they don't do their plagues half-assed here. The more Biblical, the better.

Dust storms? Ours are toxic, spore-laden killer dust storms!

Cockroaches? The size of a pack of cigarettes!

Houseflies? In swarms that will black out the sun!

And now we can add fog so thick it could swallow your will to live.

Lord of the Flies

So it's been with a sense of dread and sick anticipation that we awaited the next plague. We'd already been invaded by cockroaches and blasted by killer dust storms. And that was only in the first month. Surely there was going to be more, it was just a matter of time. I'd put my money on locusts. I was wrong.

It's FLIES.

In all fairness to Bako, this is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, it's entirely man-made.

And that man's name is Juan.

Our duplex comes with a stamp-sized front and back yard, and the rental deal includes a once a week gardener. That would be Juan. Clearly, he isn't very good. Both lawns are dead. All the shrubs too. The rest of the neighbors have lawns that look like lush, submerged rice paddies. Ours looks like a recently plowed alfalfa field. The shrubs, whatever they may have once been, are now nothing more than rooted balls of kindling. And yet he comes, dutifully each Thursday, to rake the dirt. God bless him.

While the shrubs are beyond hope, we were pretty sure the lawns could be salvaged, if only they were re-seeded. We proposed this to Juan, and he seemed genuinely excited. So imagine our surprise when we came home a few days later to a freshly seeded front lawn... covered with an inch and a half of manure. Real, honest to cow, manure.

The smell hit you first, and it hit you hard. But you were quickly distracted from that by the flies. Thousands and thousands of flies. They enveloped the house, and hid by the doors, just waiting for a chance to make it inside. Which they did. In droves.

It's been almost two weeks now, and the smell is long gone. The flies are not. In fact, I believe they've now taken up permanent residency, along with the cockroaches. They've taken a particular liking to my car, which they blanket as if it were a giant rotting melon. The boyfriend takes sadistic pleasure in killing as many as he can. The dogs eat them. I've just thrown in the towel and await what's next.

My money is still on the locusts.

Next Up: Locusts

How the hell do people live here? Every day seems to bring another Biblical plague. Actually, now it's making sense, the whole Jesus-ness of this place. Anyone with a working cerebral cortex has obviously fled, and all that's left are the snake handlers and tongue speakers who get off on being smote.

So the first big winter storm is moving into California today, and I was actually looking forward to it. And last night as I walked the dogs, you could feel it approaching, the wind gusting, a chill in the air, a Fallish feeling you rarely get in LA. And I went to sleep hoping to be woken up by the sound of rain.

No such luck. What I woke up to was a "dust" storm. That's what they call it. They're delusional. It's DIRT. Airborne dirt. From the hundreds of thousands of acres of fallow farmland and bankrupt, half finished home developments. Enveloping this craptastic city in a cloud so thick you can't see to the end of the street. You walk outside and immediately your eyes sting, they scratch. Just walking to your car coats you in a fine film of dirt. I just tried to walk the dogs and even they wouldn't venture into it, and digging in dirt is their JOB. It's what they DO. They aren't idiots. Unlike the residents of this hellhole. I was outside for less than ten minutes and I feel like I just clawed my way out of a shallow grave. And it's LETHAL. It carries something called "Valley Fever", which, I'm told is only occasionally fatal. If you grew up here, you have a certain immunity, or so they believe. Well, if you grew up here, and you're still here, you're a moron. Meanwhile, it's only us newcomers who evidently have to be concerned with, you know, dying.

I'm hoping when the rain comes, if it does, it'll wash all this crap out of the air. But the way things are going, if the rain finally does arrive, it'll be flaming.

A Break in the Weather

We've been here almost three weeks, and today will be the first day when it isn't going to be over 100 degrees. Praise Jesus. They say in real estate it's location, location, location, and it's not until you live here that you realize Bakersfield is Death Valley Adjacent. Of course, the cooler weather comes with a price - the local "news" is warning of blowing dust storms later this afternoon. Great. Next week it will be raining frogs.

The heat doesn't seem to faze the locals. Nothing seems to faze the locals. Except Obama. And if the subject of the weather comes up at all, it's usually an ominous warning about the coming fog... The Fog.

Lovely. My life is now a John Carpenter horror film.