Yes, pest control. And, no, I am not referring to a "code phrase" that warns friends of a touchy-feely troll of an old man that lingers in the bar. There are bugs in my apartment. Worse than that, they are in my room.
GROSS! GROSS! GROSS!
Tonight, I was moving some boxes in my room when I noticed some strange holes at the bottom of one box that has my framed college diploma and another framed print stored inside. It looked kind of like an ant hill on the side of the box, or like something came out of the hole from the inside. And there were a few of them which meant this wasn't good at all. So, I tilted the box away from the wall to look behind it.
It didn't look pretty. The bottom 2 inches or so of the box has been chewed through with particles of it all over the floor and partially on the wall. When I first tilted the box back and looked down, I did see a few little things moving around (YUCK!) that looked, to me anyway, like termites. Yes, I know termites eat wood. But a little research will also tell you they eat cardboard... as do cockroaches and ladybugs. I know this wasn't done by ladybugs and if it is cockroaches then I'm moving as soon as I can. Termites I can almost handle, although I have been really itchy since discovering this.
Now I have a few issues to deal with, both immediate and long-term: (1) How to get the box out of my apartment without dragging bugs everywhere, (2) How to kill them after, (3) The unpleasant thought of looking in the boxes stored nearby (that are under my bed) to see if bugs are eating those too, (4) replacing my college diploma which was stored in that box and has most likely been chewed on, and (5) being paranoid while living here about bugs returning or being found elsewhere.
I am far from a dirty person and have no idea how they got in or how long they've been feeding off of that cardboard box and its contents. Its quite disturbing that I was sleeping in there with a colony of insects gnawing at my personal possessions. I guess that's better than chewing on me, but still... GROSS!
I'm going to have to call the management company in the morning to get this taken care of ASAP. Hopefully, its not as bad as it looks. If I'm lucky, my other stuff is fine. But this weekend, cardboard boxes are being replaced by plastic bins from Target.
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