Mini-muse 003: Booklouse
I learned a new word…
Hi little coven.
I had the unfortunate experience of adding the word “booklice” to my vocabulary this past week.
If you’re still living in the blissful ignorance I was mere days ago, don’t google them. All you need to know is this: these little pests are largely harmless but a nightmare for the squeamish (moi!), and they like to make their home in the spines of old books, the seams of certain fabric, and the tough-to-reach places behind headboards and under beds.
Looking for the recording of our most recent tarot journaling club session? Find it here.
They don’t bite and they aren’t a pressing danger. They’re just unsettling little armies who like to camp out in intimate places.
It’s straightforward enough to do war with them: flood their colonies with vinegar (add lavender oil if you want to breathe), dry them out by blowing your entire winter heating budget in just a couple of days, and pay homage to the gods that control your washing machine, because you’re going to need its blessing.
“Booklice” is — both relievingly and kind of disappointingly — a little bit of a misnomer. These creeps aren’t intellectuals; like most harmless household pests, they feed on dead skin cells, mold, and other organic debris. They do harbour a craving for the kind of glue that used to bind old books, but unless you’re an archivist, they’re probably not coming to your bookclub.
So, my books are mostly safe from an infestation of booklice, but my imagination, for better and worse, is not. Somewhere around my 30th load of laundry this week, I found myself struck by inspiration: The Booklouse as a children’s book character.
Transformed from my latest source of Ick, the Booklouse of my fictional fantasy subsists on a diet of words. She snacks on celebrity memoirs and savours the taste of poems, wrinkles her nose at botched twist endings and saves fairy tales for dessert.
She’s gone no contact with her family — the unread masses who’s just as soon munch on the lining of my husband’s left book as dine on my dog-eared edition of Women Who Run with the Wolves. Those basic bugs don’t understand her.
She’s not like other lice at all, just an aspiring bookblogger consuming words like her life depends on it, and I’m happy to offer her — and only her — a bite of my library.
Tell me in the comments:
Do you still like me even though I told you about booklice?
What have you been musing about, lately?
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OH NO. NO NO NO. As someone who lived through a moth infestation once you have my horror and my sympathyyyyyy
this is exactly the book i would have bought if it had been available when my kids were little.
oh to be honest i would have bought it for myself. it sounds amazing… so what are you waiting for?
ps still think you are great… even though i am now looking a bit scared under my bed… these are different kinds of “monsters under the bed”