EARLY MORNING AWAKENING

It was 6:09 when I crept from bed.

Queen sheets often trip me but

I made it up and out of my room

to safety. I read too much I’ll grant

you that. You’d best quit reading this.

I’d seen a squib abut copperheads

in a closet nest, and I’d just read

about  more than a hundred species

of  arthropods found  in the average

home, listed for our pleasure surely:

a few spiders, millipedes, booklice,

silverfish, ants, midges, flies, rolypolys…

They didn’t count bedbugs because

too few—and of course the R word.

They weren’t counting snakes.

Back to me: I heard a click near my

ear.  Or was that a rattle? A presence

beside me in my bed!  Remember I’m

just waking up, emerging from dreams

to this!*                                         — Nan

*Although a house can feel empty when you’re the only one home, it isn’t really. A typical human household includes roughly 100 species of insects, spiders and other arthropods just milling around at the edges of the room, eating little bits of hair and dead insects. Rather than reaching for the bug spray, people should be excited that they live alongside so many other species ….Get to know your bug bunkmates, higher occurrence in more affluent homes.  (Compilation of wisdom from Google).

See articles from Atlantic, Mother Nature Network, N.C. State News, Time, Chicago Tribune and especially https://peerj.com/articles/1582/ (for a table of the bugs found).