Two Solutions to Your Insect Problem

A can of Raid is next to godliness.

I came home to ants. They found the honey in the cupboard. Assholes. I took the food out of the cupboard and spread a nice layer of some toxic carcinogen ant barrier spray. They twitched a little, then stopped being ants and became little black specks in my cupboard. I wiped them away and put the food back, except the honey. I put that in a ziploc bag and dumped it into the bottom drawer.

Anthropomorphism.

Ivan the Terrible lives in my skylight. I don't know anything about the historical figure he is named for. Wasn't he a Viking or a Druid or something? The Ivan I know is just as terrible, if not more so. He's built a web in the corner of the bathroom skylight, content to shrink into the corner where plastic meets plaster during the day. At night, he is a splayed sillhouette just barely visible against the black backdrop of sky.

He's growing, he's stronger every day in his arachnid penthouse, too high to be swatted down, too far for a can of Raid. He's a silent menace. Like all spiders, he could bungee down on me at any moment, a hundred spider feet, landing on my head or in my towel. He is perfectly positioned for an arial strike.

But maybe this isn't the horror story I've made it out to be. Maybe at night when the house is silent he's just watching the trees swing under the stars, content in his hammock. A kind-hearted monster.

Not likely.