Low Life

There is an area in the southeastern portion of South Carolina known as the lowcountry.  It's where I've spent the majority of my life, and where my father's family can trace it's roots back over 300 years.  My house sits at the edge of a rice field, on the edge of a river that pours into the Atlantic Ocean.  It's elevation is 7' above sea level.  It's almost 30 miles northwest of the nearest beach, but the salt line, that place where fresh water turns to salt water, is a quick boat ride away.   The air is so hot and liquid here in the summer, it's all you can do to breathe.  Mosquitoes and gnats love it.  So do palmetto bugs and developers, who sell marsh view and marsh front homes in neighborhoods with all the lifestyle enhancing amenities they can think of.  I wonder if they include pest control company listings in the information packet new homeowners are given.  In case you aren't familiar, palmetto bugs (first mentioned above, right before "developers") are just giant two or three inch long roaches, with the ability to fly - I'm serious!  Two or three usually show up inside your house sometime during the winter. I had a transplanted boss tell me once that where he came from, having a pest control company come to your house was such a scandulous shame, they were scheduled after dark, and told to park in the alley in back.  He said down here having a pest control truck in your driveway seemed to be a status symbol.  That was one of the few sincere laughs he ever got out of me.  I still laugh about it.  I can just see he and his wife scrubbing their house from top to bottom because some randon palmetto bug came in.  Just kill the bug, call the pest control if you really think it will help, and go on about your life.  It wasn't a dirty house that attracted the big fellow, it was a warm one. Oh well.