Every time I have to swat a fly, I say a little prayer of thanks for the fact that I live in the modern era. I’ve seen dinosaur bones, I’ve seen documentaries about how big things used to be, and so I can’t help but be overwhelmed with gladness. The flies in the prehistoric era were apparently massive, so big that they’d just shrug of your average fly swatting technique. Cockroaches were small dog size, and while they were probably just as harmless overall, bigger bugs are terrifying. To say nothing of the spiders.

I mean, just take your average company in the field of pest control near Berwick and transplant them in the prehistoric era. So we’re talking Berwick, but before recorded history. Humans shiver in caves at the thought of going out and having ants crawl up your leg that can happily carry logs in their herculean arms. Maybe that’s why there are so many cave paintings…all that time we spent inside, scared of the giant spiders and rats. So pest control people back then weren’t just a matter of ridding oneself of a nuisance; it was perhaps a matter of life and death. Also, a much harder job. No chemicals, at least not the fancy ones we have today. You just go out there with a club and hope you can smack the rat before it bites you.

Talking about this is giving me the shivers. Sounds silly, but at least I can look at how big cockroaches are today and at least get some sense of scale. Then I think about pest control professionals in the aftermath of a nuclear war and I get a whole new sense of appreciation for the comparatively-peaceful modern era in which I live. Forget dogs; you could be dealing with cockroaches the size of horses. Nuclear horse cockroaches.

You can easily identify the proud pest controllers in that setting, however. They’re the ones riding tamed cockroaches into battle against the insect horde, inspiring courage in the remainder of humanity.

-Ingrid