Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Disclaimer: the events hereinbelow related

Disclaimer: the events hereinbelow related are true, but took place several years ago.  Since then, we’ve been totally clean.  It’s dull but it’s safe. 

Meet the Beetles

It had been going on for months before either of us really brought it up.  We knew that speaking of it aloud would validate it, verify its actuality.  We opted for denial for a long time, but finally one of us had to say the words, “Do you ever notice these things?,” while holding up a grain of brown rice.  Or - no, that’s not rice, though the right size and shape - but not so regular - those look like legs - oh god it’s a beetle, give me strength we’ve been infested....

We knew it was worse than we saw, which was just a beetle or two each day, sometimes several in the morning after a really warm night, scattered across our stovetop and counter.  Always dead or barely moving.  We’d wipe them up like so many breadcrumbs.  Honestly, there were tiny and seemed much less gross than some other forms of life that might infest our food, but even so, we preferred to live without them and cleaned up very carefully to source them out.  This led us to toss a box of instant mashed potatoes that seemed to be about 2/3s beetles, hoping this would fix our problems.  But I suspected it wouldn’t.

I suspected correctly.  We found no beetles for a few months, but eventually a new one showed up.  It was back behind the lazy susan in the cabinet, in a very out-of-the-way spot.  We pretended again.  Again, as the seasons turned and spring ripened, the little buggers came back in force.  We’d cleaned everything, checked for holes to the outside, divested ourselves of all instant potato products, but still they showed up, in small numbers but steadily.  We went over everything again. 

In the midst of this exercise we decided to clear out the old herbs and spices too.  We have a capacious spice rack built into a recessed space in a deep cupboard door that used to house an ironing board - now it’s got about eight shallow shelves that we fill with spices.  Some of these spices we bought long, long ago and are no longer using because all their savory attributes have irretrievably deteriorated.  Yet, because we still had half of a huge tub of these various bulk spices, we wouldn’t replace them.  Old oregano, red pepper flakes gone brown with age, chives that were no longer entitled to use that name… we went through and cleared out a bunch of wizened old seasonings. 

As a geek (or geek wannabe, which is even sadder), I alphabetize the spices, so we were nearing the end of the collection when we got to the cool Hungarian paprika in the big metal cannister.  We didn’t remember where we’d gotten it (we were pretty sure it wasn’t Hungary though); it was certainly very good paprika.  But we were ona mission to evaluate the quality of every item on those shelves so I pried off the green plastic shaker lid.

Inside was a mass of tiny beetles.  They seemed mostly dead.  Mostly.  They were dusted with fragrant and vibrant paprika.  I knew there was plenty of paprika in there; it shook out readily whenever I wanted to use it, which - till then - had been a regular, if occasional, occurrance.  But all I could see when I peered into the container was beetles.  Hundreds of them. We threw that paprika the hell away.  With it went the last of the beetles and the end of the infestations. 

It’s been years now, beetle-free and proud.  I recently was working in the kitchen, opened a new box of sugar, and one of these beetles fell out.  I poked at its dead little grain of a body with a wooden skewer. The sugar was glacially white.  I was ready to start baking, I didn’t want to go out to the store again for more sugar just on account of this one vermin (or is the singular “vermus?").  I decided to dispose of the beetle and forget I’d ever seen it.  I knew where it had come from, that there was only one, that it was really someone else’s problem down at the C&H plant.  And anyway I’d probably inadvertently eaten more than my share of them already back in the gross old days. 

Then I began to feel badly for it, dying in a box of sugar.  What a way to go.  I sometimes imagine myself dying from being buried in a mountain of granulated salt.  I’d heard such a story when I was very young and it always struck me as particularly horrible.  But to die in a box of sugar, a sweet coffin - the irony could kill you.