Which gets added to the long list of reasons why a dog is exactly what we need. Also, I totally recommend hairspray.

I tend to divide the world into two camps: people who can deal with bugs and people who cannot.

OK, fine. I divide the world in other ways too. But I bet you are or you aren't.

No?

Despite having grown up in countries with cockroaches the size of small children, I fall into the latter category. I whimper. I jump up and down. I get all ishy foo foo (and thank you, Connie, for the excellent maybe-Minnesota expression). I either run or fight the urge mightily.

I call shrilly and desperately for my mama, if she's anywhere nearby. She's one of those deal-with-bug-ers.

So last night, with no Betty and no Nick anywhere within miles, I saw one of those creepy beigey hairy leggy crawly insecty things marching down the hall. Nick calls them silverfish, although I feel like these have a lot more wavy things waving off of them than the silverfish with which I am familiar.

Plus, as pictured above, this one had fangs and utensils.

So this creepy wavy dude was making his way down the hall towards the bedroom. He stopped halfway, sort of against the wall, and I leaped over and past him, into our room.

I looked around frantically for something toxic, but it turns out that we don't even own Raid, much less keep a can next to the bed.

So weird, huh?

The time I encountered a cockroach I hairsprayed the shit out of it. And then I covered it with a lot of paper towels and left the house and called Nick.

Nick later asked me to Please Never Do That Again. It turns out to be horrendously hard to get rid of a bug that's been firmly affixed to the floor.

More ishy foo foo.

So then I saw the squeeze bottle of Purell! I squoze. And then I covered it with a lot of kleenex. But then it seemed like it might have survived. So I had to flatten it. Because unlike with the hairspray, I couldn't be certain it wouldn't escape.

Just writing it makes me all twitchy squeamy goosebumpish.

But it makes me less twitchy squeamy than the idea of going to bed with it all waving its creepy leggy fronds around and marching towards the bedroom.

Because you know Nick would come home and our baby would've been eaten by a potential silverfish on steroids. And it would be all my fault.

Actually, it would be his fault. Because raccoons have opposable thumbs and God knows when one might disable the alarm, pick the lock, open the door, and saunter down the hall and untie our shoelaces and give us rabies and plus our old house has creaky ghosts - Nick calls this "settling" but Betty says they're ghosts for sure, and she likes them - and creepy crawlies.

And now that I'm not allowed to use hairspray, plus I'm sure it wouldn't work on raccoons or ghosts, I think the only reasonable answer is a dog.

Don't you think?