Innocent until proven guilty?

Each morning I wake at 5:00 a.m.ish. I sluggishly get up, get the boys ready to fly out the door with Dan by 6:15 a.m. so I can get girls ready and out the door and head out to work. For the past several months we have had an "awakening" of sorts in our yard/house. The flippin' box elder bugs are awake.

In the Midwest we have this problem in some neighborhoods of box elder bugs. They are small, black and red bugs that resemble a cock roach (to me any way) and they have to be crunched (literally) or suffocated in order to kill them. They are resistant to many bug killing pesticides and really unless you walk around spraying them directly with soapy water they will outlive nuclear radiation and the end of the world, of this I am positive.

So, now that Minnesota is beginning to thaw out and we've even reached a couple of days in the 70s the damn bugs are back! They "hibernate" in the soffit of your house and then when they warm up they come INSIDE...yes...INSIDE! INSIDE the goddam house! Can you believe this? The nerve! So after they come inside they look for warm spots (and yes this includes people). Mine tend to hang out on the big windows on the South Eastern side of the house where it is sunny most of the day. They hang out and improve their Vitamin D intake on my damn windows. Well...when it gets dark they start to migrate their way to my kitchen. This is long and treacherous journey for some. They have to avoid areas where they can be seen by Izzie (dumb dog) because she tries to eat them, discovers they are horrible and spits them out thousands of paces away from where they need to be to get to the kitchen. When Izzie doesn't see them I do and I call for Nick, the bug slayer (he really loves this new Nickname and takes his job very seriously). Nick comes running, grabs the bug with his fingers, crunches it and throws it in the garbage, after he chases his screaming sisters around the house with it of course. Now that's some funny shit, watching them run like sissies screaming from a three year old holding a bug. They sure do give him some power.

Sometimes the box elder does in fact make it to it's original destination, the kitchen sink, where I keep a light on above all night (for the sake of children who get up to use the bathroom and the occasional night time bottle that must be carted upstairs for the screaming baby (that's a whole different post). They will bask in the warmth radiating from that kitchen light for the night.

In the morning, as I said above, when I fall out of bed at 5:00 a.m. I am a little grumpy most mornings until I get going. Of course when I see these cock roach resembling, disgusting bugs in and around my sink and clean dishes I freak the hell out!

This is where my questionable behavior comes in... is it considered murder when you very intentionally grab the bottle of foaming hand soap and pump just enough out to cover that nasty little bastard so you can watch it frantically start flailing all of it's legs and after about a minute slowly start twitching because it is suffocating to death? Even worse, is it premeditated murder because I will actually take the moment out of my hectic morning to watch and enjoy this slow and torturous death?

I am unsure but I believe if put into a court of the bugs peers I would be gettin' FRIED today! There would be no last meal, no last rights, no phone calls or visits...straight to the chair with me. If you have ever seen the movie, The Green Mile when the asshole cop doesn't wet the sponge for the inmates head before they fry him and the inmate gets all smoky and it smells like burnt flesh...I'm pretty sure that's the treatment I would get from fellow box elder bugs.

Guilty? Maybe. Ashamed. Not at all!

Good day and happy box elder hunting.