One of my favorite things about Phoenix is the lack of bugs and rodents that I had in Texas, California and Tennessee. I’m aware there are bugs and critters here, I just haven’t seen much of them yet, and for that I’m probably lucky. Nothing but crickets, for the most part. No mosquitos, flying roaches, fire ants, wasps, black widows, chipmunks, bats, or gigantic grasshoppers.

Growing up in San Antonio, recess sucked because you spent 30% of your time dodging fire ant mounds, small Mexican bats tended to fly into houses with front doors left open, and Marco Polo was played in the pool, mostly because if you stayed with your head above water too long you were sure to get stung by a wasp or hornet swooping down for a drink. We also had roaches e v e r y w h e r e. One of my beloved high school memories is when a gigantic roach flew across the cafeteria and boys and girls of all ages and sizes were screaming and ducking under the tables. In Tennessee, we had mosquitos so engorged and lazy that you could swat the greedy monsters on your body with no problem because they were too full of blood to get away. We also had a big chipmunk problem. So many, in fact, that my friend went jogging one time and startled a group of them. They came skittering out from under some shrubs and one actually jumped up and attached itself to my friends pants leg and caused him to run screaming down a hillside with the chipmunk swinging from his pants (please note that similar episodes have happened to multiple people). California was full of black widows where we lived. And huge, huge grasshoppers. And ladybugs. People love ladybugs but when you see large clumps of them all over the place, you’ll think differently.

I probably just jinxed myself by even making this observation. We heard that if you can keep your home and property fairly bug free that you won’t have scorpions. I’m hoping this works because I’m too lazy to have to start shaking my shoes out everytime I need to get dressed. And don’t even talk to me about lizards.