When the buzzing won’t stop

I walk into my kitchen and there are 1,000 insects swarming at the top of the ceiling. They are making a roaring, buzzing sound, the type you hear in jungles far, far away. With translucent wings and soft bodies, they appear to be a cross between every swarming creature in Louisiana: a termite-mosquito-horsefly that was somehow birthed into being in my kitchen.

I tell my husband not to worry. “We’ll turn off the lights and close the kitchen door. In the morning they will be gone.” 

His eyes bulge.

“That is not how it works, bugs are not that smart. Hopefully, they will all die and we can sweep them up in the morning.”

I roll my eyes and go to bed with the confidence that at dawn they will have slipped through the cracks of our 125-year-old house into the swampy, southern air.

At 5:45am I walk into my kitchen to the roar of insects above my head. One has perished and lays curled up on my kitchen counter. The other 999 remain hovering in a cloud, buzzing.

It is too early, I am too tired, I am not caffeinated, I have worked too many 14-hour days straight in a row for 999 insects to not go where they belong.

I think, What if they multiply? What if they all die at once and the brown recluse spiders come out to eat them and then we have a poisonous spider problem? What if they’re actually terminates that will gnaw at our house until it crumbles?

I stumble to my husband still in bed and say, “They are still there.”

He creaks open an eye. “I know.”

I peer at him, petrified.

He takes my hand in his.

“They’ll drop in a few days. We’ll sweep them up. There’s nothing you can do.” He pauses. “Except live with them.”

I can hear the insects from the bedroom. Their roaring is loud and strong, a clear cacophony. It seems like it will never end.

Of course, it’s always feels like that. It always does end.

He’s right.