A Thing Called Monsoon Season

So apparently this area in Arizona goes through a thing called "Monsoon Season" every year. I found this comical when I moved here because this is the desert...and because I lived in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, I know all about summer showers. But it is, in fact, monsoon season, which means it rains almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Because they are thunderstorms, they roll in over the mountaintops and appear in your backyard fairly quickly - then disappear almost as fast as they arrived. This makes for some BEAUTIFUL skies. The one above is my favorite picture I've taken, and here are a few others.

So what's NOT comical about this situation is the disgusting things you see because of all this rain. Let me show you what I have seen over the past month of living here. All these creatures come out, mainly at night, because all this water is flooding into their homes and burrows and pushing them out - pushing them into our apartment.

The Creatures I've Been Unfortunate Enough To Encounter

#1 Cockroaches. Yum. And this picture is not an exaggeration. As you are about to see, bugs are on steroids out here. I didn't take these pictures, I don't tend to want to get close enough...So I looked at Arizona websites and picked the ones of the bugs we found and in their actual sizes. Number seen to date: Too many to count...thankfully only ONE in our apartment.

#2 Field Mice. Sooooo cute, right? Wrong. Wait til you start finding mice poop in your apartment and we'll see how cute you think they are. I found droppings right when we moved in under our sink, on our hamper, in the corner of our bedroom...All I could think about at night was them crawling over my sleeping, unaware self. So Ryan bought traps and a day later we caught one....we haven't seen any droppings since. Number seen to date: one.

#3 Gross Beatles. These come in all sizes and shapes, but these are the ones I smash with my feet every night when I take Marcy out to the bathroom. I HATE these. They are huge and disgusting and filled with tons of liquid because they spray everywhere when you stomp on them. Number seen to date: 20-50

#4 Little Tarantula. I found a dead one of these on my friends doorstep a week ago. We screamed and freaked out. Then I saw another dead one two days ago in the grass. Two for two for finding dead ones. Still gross....and couldn't have prepared me for....

#5 Freaking Disgusting Bigger Than Softball Tarantulas. I have seen three of these in the past week. They are huge. Ryan and his friend took a giant rock and smashed the first one in the parking lot over the weekend. Ryan now loves going tarantula hunting at night against my will. I have never seen spiders this big in real life. Gross. Number seen to date: 3 - all outside.

#6 Bark Scorpion. My favorite. The reason Ryan has to listen to me cry about how much I hate living here. The reason he now has to pull all of the covers off the bed every night and check every layer. The reason I fell off the toilet in the middle of the night this past weekend and hurt myself because I thought I stepped on one in the dark. This is the most poisonous scorpion in North America...and I was blessed enough to find one crawling on my foot last Friday night while sitting on our friend's apartment floor with Marcy. THAT was the breaking point. I had been complaining about being afraid of scorpions since we moved and Ryan would make fun of me...he now has promised he will never tease me again. These scorpions are the only ones who can climb vertically, so they can hide in your clothes, curtains or cupboards. Number seen to date: 1 - and it was inside an apartment.

This is why Monsoon Season is no longer comical to me. I loathe it. I hate not being able to sleep at night for fear of what could be crawling on my face or in my covers. I don't want to live in an area where they have these creatures ever again....

Give me the alligators, sharks and jellyfish back....I can deal with those....