Maggot Attack!

Am I a good dad?

Guys! Major dad fail. I neglected to put out our trash last Wednesday and then we were gone Saturday. So today, I saw a ton of maggots amidst the towering bags of liquefying garbage. End of story? I didn’t contain them. (In an effort to be kind to the garbage men, I put bigger bags over the small bags that were covered in squirming white larvae and thought that would be sufficient. It wasn’t). Now my garage is under assault. They’re everywhere. I’m spilling beer and boiling water. (I read you can get them drunk and then boil them alive).

Update: The beer seemed pointless, except I got to drink what I didn’t spill, which was nice.

The sun was hitting the driveway so they were creeping up towards our house in the garage where it is shaded and cooler. The tactical advantage was mine however, because it’s easier to pour boiling water down the slope and wash them away.

Updated update: I think I’m almost done. I boiled/ washed away the corners and have been able to stomp the stragglers. It’s been an unplanned and time consuming task.

We just want to avoid a garage full of flies in a week. And also the gross sight of a garage swarming with maggots.

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Updated updated update: I think this would be a fun story, if I filled in a lot more details¹ and then at the end, swerved into a bunch of hypothetical questions that are all essentially asking, ‘am I a good dad?²’

1. For example, details could be: the speed of the maggots’ crawl; getting splashed while washing out the cracks on the floor; sitting my twin boys in front of the tv so I could focus on the battle, etc.)

2. If I fictionize it, a model for this story would be Donald Barthelme’s Porcupines at the University, which after several pages detailing the Dean’s worry about the approaching porcupines and the porcupine wrangler’s attempts at songwriting (before culminating with their confrontation) ends with these lines: “The citizens in their cars looked at the porcupines, thinking: What is wonderful? Are these porcupines wonderful? Are they significant? Are they what I need?”