Time of Grossness!

So really this story begins, with getting ready for the welcome back party. We spent most of Wednesday afternoon cleaning and baking cookies, cakes, and brownies so that everything would be perfect. Kamilija offered to help us clean up after spending a couple hours with Taylor, and we accepted her offer gratefully. Some things that need to be pointed out before I go further are that, before arriving here in Rijeka the apartment had been empty for a month. So this meant that overall this place had a lot of build up of dirt. Second is that are balcony connects to this mini garden that is beautiful and makes it more private. Well, on with the story. Kamilija offered to sweep off the porch so that we could hose it off. She came into the kitchen to tell me that I needed to come see something. Then she walked a bit further and yelled for Taylor. I walked outside and wasn't sure what I was looking for, but she followed me and pointed to her pile. Maggots!!!! She told us that while sweeping along the wall she started to pull them away from the edge of the wall, and more and more were coming. So this picture really doesn't capture the horrifying scene. They wiggled and were moving and were everywhere!!! So wierd as it may be, Taylor's immediate suggestion was to torch them. Though hair spray makes her extremely sick, she thought it would be a perfect solution to this problem. It was a solution previously used for ants in the past...johnrozelle.blogspot.com/2006/06/aftermath.html. So Taylor got the hair spray and lighter. Doda stopped by at one point to bring us lemons from her parents stand, and was also very grossed out by our problem. She did not want to stay to see the torch, so we said farewell and went to work. Who would have thought that this could be fun. Of course, I think everyone has a little bit of a pyro in them. Kamilija even got into this and was excited to try out our home made torch. So granted this was not the safest thing to do, but it was very effective. We found more and more maggots every time we moved a piece of deck furniture, so I would say drastic measures were needed. We continued this practice until all of the magets were dead. She also decided to attempt to torch along the wall where they were kind of hiding, because we didn't want them inside our apartment. At this point, we were even venturing to say maybe they were not maggots but rather termite larva. This would have been even worse because most likely part of the wall would have had to been inspected leaving a gaping whole in our stucco. That kind of leads me into story part two, but first...some how even though I was the one worried about torching the paint, I was stuck with firing up the wall. So I tried it out just a little at first, and to my surprise the wall was not at all damaged. I continued with this until I had covered all the sections, and we were happy with our work. Part two: The other problem we had was a dead bird in our mini garden. None of us wanted to deal with it, so we sent a text to the men and asked if they would be of assistance. Andy came over early to help us, even though he was not sure what I was getting himself into. Well, the dead bird was half the issue. The other half, was the maggots all over the bird. (Hmm, wonder where the maggots on our porch came from. The only thing is someone please explain to me how maggots migrate a good five feet to our apartment wall...) Using a shovel and a bag, Andy took care of the bird and torched the magets for us. He was thoroughly grossed out now too, and well lets just say it was a very strange afternoon. I think that with the mood of the situation Andy needed to joke to keep himself from throwing up, because this next picture says it all. "Ugh, Andy!" That is what was heard from all the girls as he took this picture and swung the bad at us while on his way out of the apartment. Well, thanks for being such a good sport team mate. So yep, pretty sure we had a maggot infestation, though I mean they still could have been termite larva, but seriously either way....gross!