Infestations we may possibly have heard of
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News

IT’S the insect that dares not speak its name — unloved, even by gap-toothed vegetarians who would spare the lives of a teeming litter of household spiders.

You know the bug. You just pretend you don’t.

I don’t blame you. It’s an awful insect that, like all bad things, scuttles furtively — in this case, through the hair -- like a puny, vicious monster bustling through the undergrowth. Picture a miniature version of Shelob (the giant spider) in Lord of the Rings.

You just scratched your head, didn’t you?

But you’ve never heard of head lice, except perhaps in something harrowing and full of orphans, by Dickens. Naturally. Nor have I.

“Perhaps the McCourt kids in that book Angela’s Ashes might have them, those luckless Irish children who shared an outdoor loo with their neighbours,” we sniff. Bugs would be the least of that lot’s worries. A few lice, what’s the difference when your siblings are dying of starvation and you’re almost blind from conjunctivitis because of the coal dust you keep grinding into your eyes.

Actually, the little McCourts probably didn’t have head lice. Head lice prefer clean hair (or so the afflicted insist), and the poor kids in Frank McCourt’s autobiographical book surely weren’t lucky enough to bathe. What head lice seem to like best of all are the shiny tresses of children and teenagers. “Party in the front, party in the back,” the head louse screeches through a megaphone, and all his cronies agree, hoisting their tiny beers.

But this is all conjecture. Like most people, I know nothing of such matters. I’m like those hundreds of folks on the North Shore who will claim, with our hands resting on a stack of 10 Bibles, a Talmud, a Koran, and three Buy & Sells, that we have never encountered a rat, not even outdoors.

Bears, we’ve come across — in our kitchens, in some cases. We boast if we’ve spotted one. We just don’t confess to having any inkling of Mickey Mouse’s thuggish cousin. We don’t wish to be associated with any place where rats may congregate, because it is assumed that those places are filthy and untouchable. Mind you, this assumption would eliminate trips to Vancouver’s most attractive spots, such as the promontories at Ambleside Beach and Dundarave, the forests of Stanley Park, the waterfront at Granville Island and pretty much all of Richmond.

Vermin are vermin, you see, and we are not the vermin type. We don’t harbour vermin -- not even on our outdoor properties, which on the North Shore mostly lie adjacent to a forest, by a river that connects with the waterfront and the trains that spill the grain meant for shipment overseas. Please, don’t offend us by even suggesting that rodents might like it here.

Perhaps you are mistaking the North Shore for Manhattan, recently celebrated for its gigantic rat population by New Yorker magazine contributor Robert Sullivan, who spent a year and a half in an infested alley (on purpose) and wrote a book about it. Despite Sullivan’s credentials and the fact that he wore night-vision goggles so as not to miss a thing, I have a feeling we will not be purchasing the book Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. We won’t be able to relate.

Which takes us back to the uneasy topic of head lice. Those notes sent home by your child’s school clearly pertain to other people’s children, the poor unfortunates whose parents just don’t care enough to shave their heads and soap their bald pates with Agent Orange.

Let me emphasize that I admit nothing. Of fine-tooth nit combs, I am blissfully unaware. Tea tree oil? Never heard of it. Toxic shampoos? Half-and-half mixtures of mineral oil and white vinegar? Who would dream such concoctions existed? Not me. I couldn’t tell a nit from a nitwit.

I will admit to a recent bout with the pox, another delightful blight. Not for me the shrewd intelligence of those who get their children vaccinated. No, I just assumed that my youngest must be immune to the pox de poulet, since he had been exposed any number of times and come home smiling. It was quite the shocker to see his little torso peppered with itchy blisters and witness his awful torment in the middle of the night. Frankly, it made head lice seem, er, I mean sound, like a cruise on the Ocean Princess. Or the Queen Mary 2. Whichever of those ships that doesn’t throw in the Norwalk virus as a bonus.

These things don’t happen in nice families, we all know that.

Likewise, black eyes. The selfsame pox sufferer gave himself a black eye just last week. This sounds like a ruse, but in fact, it is true. His own knee met with his own eye and next thing you know, he resembled a moving target. His eye looked like the central circle on a dartboard.

Let’s just say it hasn’t been a good month for my family, optics-wise. But it has been inspiring in terms of Hallowe’en decorations. I’m not sure I’d bother pocking the skin of my pumpkin, or colouring a dark moon around its eye. Why go to that much trouble? To many grown-ups, a frowning Jack’o’Lantern with a head lice comb protruding from a spotted pate could be the most horrifying sight of all.

Writing > Humour