A couple of nights ago, the wife and I were enjoying a quiet night at home in our living room. I was on my laptop (probably doing some nerdy stuff like trying to learn Javascript and DOM scripting, but for the sake of making a better story I'll say I was) surfing for porn. The wife was catching up on some scrapbooking.

In our living room, we have what I call a fireplace. I made the mistake of calling it a fireplace in front of the home inspector when we were looking to buy the house, and based on his expression, you'd think I said "your mom is a streetwalker." He then went on about why it's a [something else with a name that escapes me], which is essentially a wood burning stove that is set in the wall, and not a fireplace. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to call it a fireplace. In reality, it's better described as a "hole in the wall," because there hasn't been a hint of a fire in it since we moved in.

Anyway, our fireplace is metal, so it makes a metallic echo-ish sound when anything happens inside of it. Consequently, it caught our attention quickly when we heard sounds coming from it. Seconds later, we saw a june bug (or june beetle or phyllophaga or whatever you want to call it) fly into the room. These bugs are all over the place outside this time of year, but it's been a while since we've seen one inside. Before I got a chance to roll up an old magazine and get into attack mode, he flew right into our lamp, got stuck, and died.

Not a minute later, another beetle dropped into the fireplace, clanked around, and got out into the room. Then another. And another. Before it was done, we saw 9 make it into the house in no more than a 3 minute stretch.

For those who don't already know this about me, I turn into Sergeant Sissy when it comes to bugs. One or two bugs is fine, but this qualified as an infestation. I did manage to smack down all of the intruders, but of course, I was terrified of the thousand more waiting in line to come in. So I did what any rational human would do - I found every piece of plastic I could find, and I taped it in place over every opening from the fireplace into the house. The bugs could still get into the fireplace, but they could no longer get from the fireplace into the house.

Then yesterday morning, I tore that all down and replaced it with a couple of those clear plastic sheets you can use to insulate your windows in the winter (warm-weather folks might not be familiar), as to make it look as classy as a fireplace covered up with plastic can look.

Don't you know that since then, not a single beetle has gone into the fireplace (and trust me, I have been watching for them). I even put a light close by in hopes of attracting them, just so I could see how they were getting in. Nothing. I got all freaked out, wasted a lot of tape and plastic, all for nothing.

So a quick note to any june beetles out there: screw you.