There’s a new pest in
town and he stinks

THE cool thing about living in Hawaii is that you never know what creatures will be plaguing your home at any time.

There seem to be pest unions, like the Centipede Professional Assembly, the Cockroach Creepy Trades Council, the Fraternal Order of Mice, the Society of Spiders, the Termite League, the Gecko Guild and the Amalgamated Association of Ants with its many sub groups (Annoying Grease-eaters Chapter 47, Big Crazy Red Ant Chapter 503, Teeny-Tiny Almost Invisible Black Buggers Chapter 666, etc.) And the unions have worked out a deal so that only one or two of the pest groups will overtake your property at one time, which, though unnerving, is rather nice of them.

So most of this year two organizations of ants have been tag-teaming (or should I say, tag-teeming) our kitchen, plotting long, complicated routes of attack that would make Gen. Patton proud. You wipe out one mile-long over-ceiling assault with a few spritzes of 409 cleaner and a few hours later a completely new battalion is mounting a strike from under the sink. They obviously adhere to Secretary of State Colin Powell's doctrine of "overwhelming force" since the target of a thousand-ant trail is usually a lone grain of rice.

BEFORE THE ANTS it was termites. Before them it was mosquitos. And on and on.

Now our house is under siege by a new pest that I've never seen before. It's a type of millipede, but not those long red ones you usually see. These are about an inch long, thin and black with a yellowish racing stripe on their backs. Their legs are so tiny it looks like the beasts are gliding on a cushion of air as they go, well, everywhere they want to: floors, ceilings, walls and, the other night, behind my ear while I was sleeping.

When you touch them or even look at them funny, they suddenly curl up like Frisbee. They're almost impossible to pick up with your fingers being coated apparently with Teflon. When you pick them up with a piece of Kleenex they squirt some wormy gunk out that smells like, well, wormy gunk. It's their defense mechanism. It doesn't help the one that is in custody because he knows he's heading for Death by Toilet Bowl. But the stink he leaves behind makes you think twice about picking up one of his union brothers.

You can vacuum them up but that's way too much technology in my book for such little critters. I've come up with a better way to collect them: Duct tape. (I'm in the process of having it registered as official Duct Tape Usage #4,576).

What you do is put a clump of duct tape on the handle end of a broom (sticky side out) and go around and just touch the tape to the fleeing millipedes and they stick to it. The Tricky Sticky Stick (Pat. Pending) will work for a few days before you discard the tape.

It's a fun way to rid yourself of this pest, although I hear their union shop steward is filing a grievance with the Human Housing Relations Board.