To Be Or Gnat To Be

Two weeks ago I woke up one morning to a gnat infestation in my kitchen. They were buzzing around the kitchen. I checked all around the kitchen for where they might be coming from. The counters were clean and the dishes washed. I had no idea where the gnats were coming from. They had even made it upstairs to the master bathroom. They were so thick I couldn't drink my morning glass of grapefruit juice without a critter diving into share it.

I set out on an eradication program. I hum up some flystrips over the sink. And I put out a Cheerwine bottle with just a little grapefruit juice in the bottom. The gnats would fly into the bottle and drown in the juice. Over a few days most of the gnats fell to their doom, but I never quite figured out where they had come from.

Then just a few days ago we got our first fruit shipment. When I was a kid we had two grapefruit trees in our backyard. Winter mornings I would tip-toe across the frost on the ground to pick a grapefruit from the tree. I became quite addicted to my morning citrus.

So when citrus season starts in December, we order boxes of fruit. The first one came as a mixture of tangerines, oranges, and pink grapefruit. I put some in the refrigerator and then I took the rest down to the coldest place in the house, the closet in the basement underneath the entry stairs. When I opened the door I caught a whiff of rotting fruit and noticed four grapefruit from a month ago I had forgotten about. I gingerly carried the bag to the trash. I finally knew what had caused the gnats to roost. There are still a few lingering around, but now I treat them as uninvited pets. I've even given them names. Here are a few:

Gnat King Cole
Gnatalie Portman
Gnatty Boh
The Gnatural
Gnat Lauer
Gnatcho Cheese
Gnatman: The Dark Gnat
Gnat Masterson
Gnattering Nabobs of Negativity
Gnatsy Boys
Donovan McGnat

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Name some gnats.