Beauvaria Bassiana

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the first verse of “Mes idées sales” (My Dirty Thoughts) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation of the first three verses. 

            I did a shortened song practice, singing only one verse and one chorus for most of the songs. Then I started getting my place ready for bed bug treatment. I rarely see bedbugs crawling around, but when I went into the bedroom to bag my bedding for the laundry there was one crawling on the wall halfway down and just to the right of my old exit door. Even though I’d done my laundry just a week before I had no choice today but to wash all the bedding again. During this infestation, I’ve yet to see any bedbugs on the living room couch, but I prepared it anyway. I flipped the two parts of the futon frame on their ends and vacuumed and lint rolled both sides of the mattress. I paid the same attention to my bed futon. I swept the whole apartment and vacuumed the floors of the bedroom, the living room, the hallway, and part of the kitchen. I was basically ready for pest control by 8:40. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. I had coffee for the first time in about a month. 

            Pest control was supposed to be here between 9:00 and 12:00 but Steve from Orkin didn’t get here until the last fifteen minutes of that time frame. I had hoped that he would treat Caesar’s place since he’s had bedbugs for about two years, but Steve was only scheduled to do mine. 

            Steve told me that they are using a great new bedbug spray that’s made with spores and is extremely effective. He said it takes about two weeks to take effect, but after that, it lasts at least three months and it works better in the long term than the dust. I looked this up later and found the agent Beauveria bassiana is a fungus that infects only insects. Then because bed bugs like to squeeze together in tight spaces, they infect each other with spores. The spores work for up to three months. It would be nice if some of the infected bedbugs travel to other apartments in my building and pass the spores on to the other bedbug populations. 

            I did my laundry and had brought my laptop along because I was supposed to stay out of my place for four hours. But while I remember the west half of the laundromat used to have an electrical outlet beside a table where I could plug in my laptop, it looks like they removed it. 

            After my laundry was done I took it home. The air in my apartment didn’t smell toxic at all but I played it safe and went for an early bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t need to stop to pee while I was downtown, When I got back it had only been about three hours but I didn’t feel poisoned after going into my place an hour early. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before taking lunch two hours later than usual. I had a lettuce, avocado, grape tomato, scallion, and roasted peanut salad with the last of my balsamic vinaigrette dressing. 

            I took a late siesta and got up at 17:44. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 17:50. 

            Because of my morning preparations for pest control and having to stay out for so long, I didn’t get any work done on my essay and hadn’t even caught up on my journal before dinner. I had a lettuce, avocado, grape tomato, scallion, radish, mushroom, and olive salad with sundried tomato dressing while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            The basic premise of the beginning of this story was unique and interesting but most of the rest was taken up by a chase. 

            It begins with a rocket crashing into a park in a big city. There is smoke coming out of a huge crater but inexplicably there is no cordoning off of the site and no investigation. Later a reporter named Scoop finds a note in his pocket telling him to go to the crash site at 20:00. He goes there and meets a little boy, a doctor, and a famous chanteuse who have all received the same note. Then Astro Boy appears and tells them that he sent them the notes. Astro Boy reveals to them that they are not on the planet Earth but rather millions of kilometers away from Earth on the Planet X. He explains that a few months ago a fleet of alien saucers flew over their city and teleported thousands of people to their ships, then transported them far across space to an exact replica of their city on Earth where they resumed their lives, not realizing that they had been displaced. They are really being studied by the aliens so they can gather information about humans in preparation for their invasion of Earth. 

            Of course, the four do not believe Astro Boy and so he signals the rocket he came there on to emerge from the crater and he invites them in. They take off and fly over the city, but past the city limits and just over a mountain they see an extremely unearthly landscape. They now acknowledge that Astro Boy is telling the truth and agree to let him take them back to Earth. But after they leave the orbit of Planet X they are pursued by a squadron of small attack ships. They shoot rays that catch Astro Boy’s ship in a kind of web and Astro Boy has to get it free several times. Then they face a fleet of saucers. Astro Boy destroys them with atomic rays. The four are returned to Earth and then Astro Boy leaves with a fleet of earth ships to rescue the rest of the Earthlings being held captive on Planet X.