I know Passover has passed, but I’m living through a series of personal plagues. They’re not Biblical in proportion, but for mere mortal me, they’re epic and loathsome.
Of course, good Jewish wife that I am, I blame my suffering not on G-d but on my spouse. You can appreciate my faultless logic. He, my spouse, not G-d, dragged me away from civilization — Berkeley, Calif., land of museums and theater — and moved me to the godless wilderness of Reno, Nevada.
The plagues began in rapid succession.
First Plague, the wildfires
The packing boxes weren’t even unpacked. The pictures had not yet hung. This was not only sad, but also ironic. We moved to Reno in part to escape the constant threat of wildfires in Northern California. Yet, immediately upon moving to Reno, I learned that — thanks to climate change and reduced snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Lake Tahoe — Reno now faced frequent wildfire threats.
In fact, our neighborhood had been evacuated just the year before when a wildfire had come perilously close. I learned all this while squinting out the window at the obscured orange sky. Thanks, honey, for the great move!
Since then, we — rather, I — faced one particularly frightening alert in which I loaded the car up with prized possessions and sat staring at the phone for hours, waiting for a Red Flag evacuation notice, which happily did not come when the winds shifted. My husband was out of town, of course.
Second, Gnats!
That same first summer bug-phobic me found that a cloud of gnats had descended upon my beloved houseplants, buzzing and multiplying in alarming and disgusting proportions.
In general, I am a houseplant queen, a woman with a green thumb. I’m not so good at raising children — ask my children. Wait, better you don’t. But in terms of indoor plants, I’m a horticultural Thumbelina. Blossoms and blooms everywhere. I mean — UNTIL we moved to Reno and the gnats took up residence.
I tried every trick the internet offered. I tried “natural” remedies, including a multi-week watering drought, yellow sticky traps for adults, treating larvae with hydrogen peroxide, and adding something called neem oil to the soil.
I also tried “unnatural” remedies, which meant all sorts of toxic chemicals.
I removed soil. I added soil. I tried everything in the Gnat Kill book. Nothing worked. Finally, I tearfully tossed plants into the trash and, after sitting shiva bought new houseplants.
Third, Snakes!
To be precise, rattlesnakes. Our tiny, gated community became ground zero for a rhumba of (adult) rattlesnakes and a pit of snakelets (baby snakes). These are true technical snake terms. Trust me. I’m now a certified snake-ologist, I mean, herpetologist.
Of course, that’s what you get for leaving the verdant San Francisco Bay and moving to the dusty Wild West — rattlers and a whole new vocabulary!
The poisonous critters bit a couple of neighborhood dogs, which wound up at the vet but luckily survived. A couple of big snakes were corralled, but more were sighted.
I happily never saw one, but the mere thought of a rattling rhumba put a rapid end to my neighborhood morning rambles.
Fourth, Caterpillars
Not “cute” little wiggly ones, but massive monsters appeared everywhere . . . on the streets, on the driveways, up the walls, into garages.
It was an infestation of, I’ll say it, Biblical proportions, one that lasted weeks and drove the neighborhood and exterminators crazy.
The marauders were so big they made crunching sounds when scrunched under car wheels.
It made me want to run for the hills (past the rattlesnakes) back to Berkeley, or better still, back to my true home country, NYC!
Fifth, Sixth, Seventh: Floods
Not outside, but inside!
We have a sump pump downstairs. Not uncommon, but our downstairs isn’t some sad, moldy, uncarpeted area. No. It’s a pretty swanky space (if I do say so myself) — complete with carpeted office, guest room, den and tiled bathroom.
Oh, but that sump pump! Any sump pump! Always a recipe for disaster. Ours flooded. Not once. Not twice, but three times. Thanks to faulty something or other, ours leaked sewage onto the hall and den carpet and bathroom tile, three times!
The damage was so extensive each time that it eventually led to the cancellation of our homeowners’ insurance (a plague on the insurance company!).
The only graceful thing I can say here is that thankfully we didn’t contract a bona fide plague from all the nasty sewage seeping into the house and air.
Eighth: Flies
For two winter months, in one concentrated corner of our house, by two warm, sunny windows, we had swarms of flies. They were not the usual buzzy, fast-moving flies, but big, BIG, slow-moving ones.
They made their first appearance on a day when my husband was, you guessed it, out of town. Berserk, bug-phobic me swatted 14 of them. Combat vets would have been awed by my kill numbers. I was nauseous.
An exterminator took pity and came right over. He surveyed the carnage and diagnosed the problem as “corpse flies.”
The bug man said the big bugs are attracted when “something dies.” Like a bat. A rat. A mouse. A raccoon. With that diagnosis, he crawled into the attic but failed to find a “feeder source” for the flies. He left. The flies remained.
The next day, our contractor came over and shimmied around the crawl space, but he couldn’t find anything, either.
Still, the flies flew and sunned themselves on the windowsills. Finally, with spring, they disappeared. The reason for their appearance in my otherwise balabusta-perfect home was never solved.
Ninth: Gnats Redux
I cannot win. The gnats have returned tenfold! I’m getting rid of all my plants and going artificial. I’m officially anti-green, pro-plastic. Sorry, Mom Nature.
Tenth Plague: Pending
What’s next? I know not. Is there a negative version of “Dayenu?” Something to stop an overabundance of the yucks? If so, can someone please let me know? Please save this harried and harassed Hausfrau — and her marriage — ASAP!
Editor’s note: Shortly after finishing her column, Karen was blessed with a new plague. Her hometown was hit with a 5.7 earthquake. “No damage” to report to anyone in the area, she said. Only shaken nerves.