Bugged Out

I woke up this sunny morn with the rumblings of a headache. Centered in the left temple region and rumbling like a distant thunderstorm, I grabbed an Aleve and stumbled, hands out and bracing like a blind person, to the coffeemaker. At that point the cats were weaving around my legs like two sharks in a chummy tank, making a loud and desperate bid to bring my attention to their empty food bowls. I set down my Aleve with a curse worthy of shipwrecked sailor and filled their bowls before one of them tripped me up, causing me to fall and gash my head open on something and die in a pool of my own congealing blood. Back at the coffeemaker, I lifted the lid, beginning the first in a set of motions I could do in my sleep by now, and stopped dead. There was a bug. I don't know what kind of bug it was, but I've seen them a lot in the backyard. In fact, I cut a gorgeous white iris stalk a few weeks ago and brought it inside. I noticed quickly that there was a black bulge in one of the blossoms. Sure enough like four of those suckers were just chillin in it. I gingerly took it outside and beat it on a paving stone until I knocked them out. The flower was a bit worse for the wear, but bug-free dammit!

So it was black and looked like a really short centipede with a big claw on its back end. I tried to google it in effort to identify it, but I found the experience to be disturbing and gross and had to give up to save a shred of my sanity. So, anyway. The bug was on the wall of the water reservoir, so I grabbed a plastic serving spoon in effort to get it out before it tainted the innards of my machine. I was not as deft as I'd hoped and instead it fell down to the bottom and clung to my coffeemaker's water filter. Looooooooovely. I suppressed a ragged scream mostly in effort to keep my headache from splitting my forehead open like the San Andreas fault. I removed the filter contraption and proceeded to beat it against the inside of my sink to knock it out. Nothing. I ran water all over and in it, nothing. I went back to my machine of delicious-caffeined-happiness. I saw nothing. The only place it could have gone was down in the water intake hole. At point I was all "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

With unsuppressed rage at my thoroughly tainted machine, I poured a bit of water in the reservoir and...yep, up he popped, desperately trying to swim and grab onto something with his sickening and unnatural back claw. I'm getting all retchy and shivery just remembering it, hold on. EEWWWAAAARGGGH! Ok. So I rearmed myself with my spoon and proceeded to dig that bastard out, plop him on the counter, dazed, and bring that spoon down on him with a satisfying "CRACK". I killed the crap out of that bug. Nonethess, it does nothing to untaint my coffeemaker. I first ran a full pot of water with several generous squirts of 409 in it. My mom always said the best way to clean your coffeemaker was to run vinegar-water through it. So I did that next, then several of just plain water. My kitchen smells like easter eggs. I made a cup of strong hot tea instead of coffee, as I don't think I could enjoy it with the taintedness so fresh in my mind. I took my Aleve with my tea, and I feel the thunderstom in my head moving farther off. I am forever changed, though. I will always feel a twinge of fear when I go to make a cup of coffee. I hope I've cleaned it good enough. If I die of some obscure infection that only Dr. House can diagnose, we'll know what's up.

P.S. Yes, as suggested the bug was totally an earwig. I don't believe it to be harmless, as I consider myself to be emotionally damaged from this incident.