Today, after leaving my next door neighbors’ house, where I’d been invited for brunch, I found another of my neighbors that I’m not terribly familiar with standing at the bottom of my driveway. I say standing, but she was actually in more of a crouch. And holding an aerosol can. And spraying little spots along the driveway edge. Lots of little spots.

Finding this a little, well, weird, I went down to see what she was doing on the pretense of bringing my trash can back to the garage, as the garbage truck had come a couple of hours earlier. We then had our Very First Conversation as Neighbors.

Me: What are you doing?
Woman: I’m spraying them! Haven’t you seen them?
Me: Seen what?
Woman: The maggots.
Me: What?! Where?
Woman: (while looking at me like I’m stupid) They’re all over! They were all over the driveways, and now they’re all over out here!

I looked around and sure enough, the culdesac looked like it was slowly moving because there were thousands (and I’m not exaggerating) of maggots swarming across it. I quickly looked to my feet and didn’t see any there, or on my driveway. We continued our Very First Conversation.

Me: Where did they come from?
Woman: I don’t know, they were in the trash cans. I didn’t see them until we got those recycling bins, though, and I think it’s because you don’t put bags in them!

Yes, her sentence was really that confusing. I think she was reaching a state of maggot-induced-panic. At this point, I went and checked my recycling bin, which was clean, as was my trash can. I pointed both of these facts out to her and told her that I’d call maintenance and see what they could do about it. She bent back to her task, sniping the maggots. One. By. One. Did I mention there were thousands of these things?

Let me point out here I would be a lot more disgusted by this if I hadn’t spent the last couple of years feeding mealworms to various animals. As it is, I’m bothered… but somehow entertained.

A couple of hours later, they were gone. This is the part that bothers me; maggots you can see are merely gross, but maggots that have disappeared have gone somewhere.

I think J and I are going to spend tomorrow putting insecticide around the house, again… After all, the problem with maggots is that you can’t be sure what they’ll morph into…. Elgh.