Woodlice

I’ve just spent part of my afternoon hosing stuff down and getting grossed out by certain bugs that look like a cross between cockroaches and slugs (or what I imagine slugs to be, since I have never actually seen one in person). These are apparently woodlice and I’ve spent another part of the afternoon studying them online and trying to let myself be convinced that they are utterly harmless. Now I feel like quite the murderer, after trying to drown a flock of them that emerged from under the garbage can outside, and also stepping on a few (not that I liked stepping on them at all).

I feel like I’m going through a cultural clash, except instead of being between East and West, it’s between concrete-and-steel and green wildlife. I promise you, one gets the heebie-jeebies when one encounters bugs that one has never seen before.

And I am sadly too put off by them now to harvest the strawberries since they are living under the strawberry plants as well.