Infestation

Aaacckk! This is like living in a recurring nightmare. I’m sick to death of them! Why won’t they leave me alone?

Call them pantry pests. Call them flour bugs. Call them the scourge of hades. I call them commas with legs (to this writer, they look like typed black commas). Whatever you call them, I CANNOT get rid of the insidious infestation of weevils in my food supply.

I’m convinced Pharaoh would have given up a lot sooner if Moses had called down weevils as one of the Egyptian plagues.

They say knowledge is the best defense against any foe, but I beg to differ in this case. My research simply stoked my horror and eroded my resolve. Apparently there are all kinds of evil weevils; among them, maize weevils, granary weevils, and the variety I’ve been graced with – rice weevils. (At first I thought I had mealybugs but the Google god revealed that they look more like tiny white porcupines than walking commas, so I’ve narrowed my diagnosis down to weevils.)

My weevil du jour – rice weevils – prefer to hang out in bags of pasta, grits, cereals, oats, cake and muffin mixes, all things rice based, crackers, and ironically, even my healthy granola bars.

They’re itty bitty things, but can do a lot of damage. Besides actually consuming the food, they bore holes inside it and lay eggs. [Shudder] And get these repulsive facts: they live up to 5 months, adults can fly, and females can lay up to 400 eggs.

Ooooh. Ooooh. Ooooooooooooh. [Shaking head like a wet dog here]

And they’re nearly un-eradicate-able. You can purge your cabinets and toss every suspicious box. Spray and disinfect until you’re purple. Sure, go ahead. I’ve done it repeatedly. Problem solved, right? NOT.

Even if just one of them nasty critters is hiding inside a Ritz Bitz, within a month, you’ll start noticing little black dots moving across your kitchen floor like migrating punctuation seeking a sentence. Yeah. A death sentence. They’re prolific as cockroaches and contagious as the black plague.

Hey, they ARE the black plague.

So this morning, after previously throwing out everything in my pantry remotely susceptible and storing the newest (hopefully unviolated) items in the fridge, I find three commas floating face down in the dog’s water bowl.

Sigh.

So as I gulped down my morning granola (with a wary eye out for moving particles, mind you), as usual, Papa God used my current conundrum as an object lesson.

“Okay, dearest daughter,” I heard a still, small voice say to my heart, “What kind of infestation has you in its clutches these days?”

I knew He wasn’t referring to an evil weevil. Something began nagging at me. Another type of black plague. This one eating into my spirit, gnawing away at my joy. One I’d been vaguely aware of for the past few weeks, but hadn’t paused long enough to name it.

And then I knew. I’d slipped back into my old habit of complaining. Of finding fault. Of being picky and unappreciative. In a nutshell … being ungrateful.

Yes. It’s true: I have a grumble infestation.

My old archenemy is back. The foe that’s snuck in repeatedly over the years since I turned over my life to Christ and vowed to live each day with gratitude and thanksgiving for the blessings I’ve received. To NOT dwell on what I don’t have.

But sometimes, I slip. And when grousing, griping and groaning become my primary means of communication, I need to remember that when everything and everyone around me seems to have a problem, I should look inward, not outward.

Maybe it’s really ME who has the problem.

It’s a struggle to stay on top of the attitude. Gratitude should float easily, but somehow it doesn’t. There’s just so ding-dang much to complain about these days.

I suspect you understand all too well. Many of us wrestle with grumble infestations. So tell me, BBFF, how do you eradicate your pesky infestation?