I watched a worm the other day. Or maybe it wasn’t a worm—do worms have antennae? Skinnier than a soup noodle, it sinuated up the bathroom wall and onto the window trim, then switched course and melted into the crevice behind the wood.

Somewhere it still lives. It wasn’t a stinkbug.

I didn’t say how our stinkbugs meet their end. We drop them into a mug of dish-detergent tinged water. It’s too slippery in there for them to scramble out. Occasionally, though, when the mug water gets overly crammed with bodies because someone’s neglected to dump them, instead of sinking and drowning a bug might clamber across the backs of the others, scale the wall, and make tracks for somewhere safer so it can again haunt us, oh dread.

The technical explanation: besides the slipperiness, the dish soap interferes with the molecular behavior of the water, allowing it to enter the bugs’ pores and crash their respiratory systems.

It’s not a fix I’m proud about.

Those sticky strips people hang from the ceiling to snag flies seem less vicious. Still, ug. I guess we could simply view the bugs as company and follow them around, wiping up after them helpfully.


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