Sunday, April 16, 2006

Please Don't Feed the Carbugs

You've heard people tell you not to eat cookies or other snacks in your bed because you might get "bedbugs". Now you can add another rule to that list. Don't eat food in your car because you might get "carbugs". No kidding. My husband took our minivan to get cleaned and detailed this weekend and the guys cleaning it found about 50 small insect-like creatures from under the cup holders and car seats. This was nothing new to the car cleaners, they had seen it before, but for us...we were like holy crap, we have bugs in our car? How did they get there? Do we need to call an exterminator and get our car fogged or sprayed?

Apparently, we learned, all it takes is for one bug to get inside the car, feast off a french fry or crackers or whatever your kids managed to throw on the floor, lay eggs somewhere in the body of the car, and boom, you're infested. The bugs are harmless to humans, and the cleaners removed all the bugs they could find (about 50 of them, yikes!) but I still have a creepy feeling about driving around in the car knowing there might be some left. Just thinking about them makes me start itching my head, as if one is crawling in my hair, (I don't know why, but every time someone says the word "bugs" and especially the word "lice", I scratch my head, it's just the image bugs conjure, they make me feel itchy like they are crawling all over me). The cleaners said if we see any more bugs, just kill them. We can't "bomb" or fumigate our car because the fumes could get trapped in our ventilation system and be harmful to our health.

Great. Just what I needed. Carbugs. You can be sure my kids are going to have to wait until we get home to eat McDonald's french fries from now on. Oh, and me too.

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