Chemical Warfare

 "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

-- Comment by an unnamed major to correspondent Peter Arnett after the battle of Ben Tre during the Vietnam War.

The war against the fungus gnats is over. I hope.

The remaining houseplant was put outside, minus the small cups that held the vinegar traps. I put my unused plant pots in a corner and covered them with a sheet of thick plastic. Items I didn't want contaminated were covered or taken into the house. 

I pulled out the vacuum cleaner to go piece by piece through the items on the top shelf of the wheeled stand where the seed containers had been. I sucked up living and dead gnats and years of soil, seed and other mess. Many things that should've been thrown out years ago were dumped. Then I pulled the stand aside and vacuumed the bottom shelf and all of the carpet. My vacuum cleaner doesn't use bags so I took it outside to pull out the container. There was one living gnat. I dumped the contents into my compost pile.

(Margo D. Beller)

Then I put on my hazmat suit - two masks, bandana, old rubber raincoat with hood up, rubber gloves - and got to work.

The Raid container said "outdoor scent" but the spray had a nauseating lemon chemical smell. One gnat that flew up dropped like a stone when sprayed. I sprayed everywhere I had seen gnats, which was just about everywhere. I had many windows open wide. Then I retreated inside for a while and washed raincoat, mask and rubber gloves.

I thought of the jungles of Vietnam as Agent Orange was sprayed on crops, foliage and people. I thought of destroying the porch to save it. Maybe I was overreacting but I could not let these insects contaminate my houseplants. 

Later in the day I put on a mask, went on the porch and put the floor fan on high. I could smell that "outdoor fresh" and wondered how long it would last. Later, I closed some windows and put the porch items back out. That afternoon we discovered at least three gnats in the den that had gotten in and were drawn by the light of the television.

Of course there were. I shut the two doors to the den and we again killed gnats.

I left the porch windows open all night. In the morning, when I put out the feeder, I closed a few of them but put the fan on.  We had planned to grill that afternoon and MH discovered dead gnats in the grill cover and some live gnats, which then tried to get back on the porch. A few succeeded. So again I was killing gnats. I thought I was finally done with it all until one came on the porch for the night when I came back inside with the feeder. 

This morning the gnat flew straight at me. It was easily killed.

So today was the first time in weeks when I did not have a gnat buzzing around me. If I think about it I smell the spray. I wasn't wearing a mask. 

And yet, things now feel strange. The porch seems emptier after the cleanup. No plants, no bird seed. I have a continued dread a gnat I somehow missed will suddenly appear. There's a tickle in my throat and a heaviness in my head that could be an after-effect of the spray itself or the stress I've felt for the weeks I've spent battling this infestation. 

War is hell.

Meanwhile, an assortment of birds continues to mob the feeder despite all the gnats and other insects flying around the yard. At some point, when it finally gets cold, I'll have to make that final decision about the houseplant now outside. 

Winter can't come fast enough.