Saturday, August 3, 2013

How To Kill Australian Bugs

There's a clever cartoon circulating on the web which we need to discuss:


I wish I knew who created this so I could credit them.  This person is obviously a far, far more talented artist than I will ever be.  How do they draw such straight lines, I wonder?

While the creator may well be the Rembrandt of our age (such as it is), he or she is an amateur when it comes to killing bugs.  Yes, these are all acceptable ways of defending your home and homeland from invading insects and aggro arachnids.  But they are only the beginning.

I used each one of these in only my first week here in Bugland (aka Australia).  Since then I have expanded my repertoire to match the challenge:


  • Fire.  Did you know that insects are flammable?  So is insect spray, rubbing alcohol, acetone, turpentine, spray cooking oil, and lots of other handy household items. This requires certain precautions, however.  Such as not living in a flammable structure.
  • Flood.  When a bug goes down the drain, it almost NEVER comes back!
  • Burying Alive.  Actually, this one is not always effective unless you have access to a backhoe/excavator.  Then, it is pretty effective.
  • Rubber Band Archery.  This takes practice.  Fortunately for me I delivered newspapers as a child laborer, and my co-child-laborers and I had access to thousands of rubber bands and hours of unsupervised time in which to shoot at all sorts of targets: flies, ants, each other . . .
  • Ballistic Projectiles.  I once bullseyed a mouse (basically a large mammalian insect) using a lemon thrown sidearm.  While seated.  At the dinner table.  While eating.  (You get extra points for each element of normalcy maintained during the kill.)
  • Shovel Bisectioning.  100% effective.  "But," you say, "how often do you have a shovel handy when there's an insect around?"  Let me put it to you this way:  Every time I have had a shovel in my hand, there has sooner or later been some sort of critter that required bisectioning with it.
  • Rake Multipokery.  This is an advanced tactic that requires specialized training.  And a rake.
  • Vehicular Bugslaughter.  This comes in two varieties:  Premeditated Bugslaughter and Involuntary Bugslaughter. What's the difference?  Legally speaking, with one of them you have to have good aim and good timing.  Either way, you have to wash your car later.
  • Utensil Stabbery.  This is a good one to know because you almost always have access to dining utensils.  Just remember to ask your waiter for clean utensils afterwards.
  • Wooden Stake Through The Brain.  This works extremely well on almost anything, not just bugs.  It's probably the only thing effective on Zombie Vampires and certain species of cockroaches.  
  • Death by Riverdance.  Got boots?  Got bugs?  Then you too can do this.  Very little practice and no Irish heritage required. Or any of that annoying jig music.  Just stomp away!
  • Flattening To Death of Small Bugs Using Your Bare Hands.  Sometimes it comes to this.  Do not attempt on anything that can bite, sting, pinch, poke, or that has a large volume of guts inside it.
Good luck!  You'll probably need it.