JUST SAYIN...

I’m beginning to realize that staying inside my home is the safest place to be right now, but not only to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. There’s some really bad stuff creeping and flying around out there.

Just when I was about to unbolt my front door, I heard about “murder hornets.” First of all, any living thing that includes “murder” in its name is something I’d like to avoid at all cost. Plus, these things grow two inches long! They swoop in and decimate beehives, ripping off the heads of sweet little honeybees. They’re plug-ugly too. And guess where they’re popping up? Washington state.  Hmmm. Didn’t “something else” pop up there a few months ago before sweeping across the country? Right. 

Meanwhile, locusts are swarming over Africa. This is no joke. I’m talking 200 billion of these nasty critters ravaging fields and farms, each eating its own weight in food. Remember in the book of Exodus when the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hands over Egypt so that locusts swarm over the land and devour everything growing the field, everything left by the hail.” You think toilet paper has been hard to find? Wait until clouds of these killers hop across the Atlantic and start munching on our dwindling food supply.

I repeat: things are happening outside that I don’t like.

Here in Vacationland, as thermometers start to creep over 50 degrees,  brown tail moth caterpillars are emerging from their webs. They look harmless, even sort of cute with their white stripes and red/orange dots. But their fuzzy hairs are TOXIC and, when released into the air, cause severe breathing problems and miserable skin itching. This does not bode well for a relaxing summer sitting on the back deck. 

To top it off, the Polar Vortex is back!  It’s making an encore and is about to put an icebox chill on our blooming daffodils and Mr. Wonderful’s weekend tee time. The newspaper says that weather more typical of early March “is coming at us like a freight train." Folks, it’s almost the middle of May and Mainers are hunting for smudge pots to protect their petunias.

I’m just sayin’…. and asking. Anything else in store for us in 2020?