Rule #1 of Canyon Life

Always check everything for bugs. Everything. I'm talking shoes, sheets, towels, clothes and toilet paper. Yes, I did say toilet paper.

It's easy to remember that while I do live in a residential area, this area happens to be located in a forest about a mile from the rim of the Grand Canyon. We have streetlights, paved driveways (sometimes) and backyards, but I'm pretty sure in other residential areas (read: suburbs) you really worry less about elk getting trapped in your fenced-in yard, breaking out your windows and trying to kill you when you go to get it out.

Or about coyotes getting your dogs because you left them outside.

Or scorpions hanging out in your underwear because you didn't shut the drawer all the way.

My personal favorite is this morning. Usually, I check everything compulsively because there are bugs all over the place. It's just the way it is when your house is built in the wilds. I check my sheets, my socks, my towels, my clothes, and then my plates and bowls.

On the way down to the kitchen this morning, in bare feet, I stepped on a moth that had decided to die in the middle of a step down from my room. I got to the dishwasher and opened it up to reveal a very dark, very black and very fast spider hanging out around my bowls. I guess he decided he needed a sprucing up with the rinse cycle. How this guy survived that is beyond me, I just let him dart away (and probably crawl back into a mug of mine).

After breakfast, I went back up to my bathroom, flicked an ant off the toilet seat, looked around the rim and bowl for other creepy crawlers (What is my toilet bowl to them? The community pool.) I grabbed a roll of my toilet paper and proceeded to check that for bugs as well, finding one right on the top. He too got flicked into the wall.

I was all ready to go, clean new white socks (why do I buy white anyways, they always turn orange from dust/dirt after I wear them out) on, I opted for my running shoes because they have support in them and my knee has been killing me lately. Hiking shoes are great for walking in steep, rocky environments--not so good for supporting knees, though. As I slipped in my left foot, I felt something down by my toes, which I wiggled around to figure out what it was.

I took off my shoe and turned it over in that childlike "crap-*shake*-I've-*shake*-got-*shake*-another rock-*shake*" way of removing anything from one's shoes. Out drops a big, ugly beetle. That I had just killed and squished (in my white socks) with my toes.