Okay, so I might have caused the ruin of my family. Accidentally, mind you. I wouldn’t do something like this on purpose…that’d be rude.
I like to think of myself as a friend to all living things, and not in a lame way. Like, I try to help birds that fly into my window to regain their self-confidence and take to the skies once more, so I taped up a message that says ‘everyone makes mistakes, keep trying!’. Hopefully they can read it before they crash. Then whenever there’s a spider in the house, I take it outside and place it in a nice bush so it can start a new life without my sister killing it dead while screaming. Stuff like that. I was talking to the pest control expert, from Frankston I think, who was around yesterday, and he said that he doesn’t really think about this kind of thing during the job. He has something to do, he helps people get on with their lives and someone has to do it. Look, I really get that, mostly.
Oh yeah, so…he came to our house for a very good reason. A couple of months ago I found some termites living in the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden. The tree is dead and I felt SO sorry for them and everything they have to put up with, so I might have made a trail of wood leading all the way to our wood pile. What? We have an electric fire now, and that wood has just been sitting there for months. And it was winter! Those termites were freezing, because insects haven’t yet discovered fabric weaving technology!
So yeah. I thought I could lead them on an Exodus, Moses style, across the garden and into a new, cozier life. And I sort of did. I led them right into the house, and they just seemed to love it. They chewed through the masonry in my room, so I was surprised to see them coming through the walls. They made it into Sally’s cupboard and ate through her favourite old jumper. Dad called the termite control exterminator, in Frankston, the folks can’t just wave a magic wand and remove a thriving community of termites from your wall without a bit of structural damage. Like, they were EVERYWHERE. We don’t know if we can move back into the house, the problem is so bad. Still waiting to hear, but…well, I’m comforted by the thought that they’re probably cozy!
-Assai