Week of March 1st to March 7th, 2022.
Cosmically speaking, all of March is a Wednesday. It’s a month full of budding hopes that are eventually thwarted by persistent bleakness.
At the close of each winter you experience a desperate, self-preservation based delusion that once the sun is consistently back in your life, you’ll never be grumpy again. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news Virgo, but you’re actually pretty pissy and mean in the warmer months, too.
The one bright spot of winter is that there are fewer bugs than the warmer months. And as many people feel compelled to remind you when catching up after years apart: you are unusually, memorably, magnificently terrified of bugs.
You recently read a headline (just the headline—you’re the problem) that alerted you to the sudden northern migration of a southwestern gargantuan “harmless” (?) spider species—all thanks to climate change. You have no interest in new bugs making their way north. Why else would you live in the north? The only reason you’ve ruled out a southwestern retirement (despite what is clearly a divine predisposition to wear linen smocks and rediscover yourself with clay) is because of scorpions and apparently this “harmless” (?) behemoth spider.
Though your fears of bugs are acute, the winter has a dulling effect on your senses—which allows you to temporarily forget your priorities and become complacent in what has become somewhat of a full time job: keeping bugs out of your home.
Your building sends an exterminator once a month, at a time that I can only imagine is decided by hurling a dart towards a calendar.
The exterminators have a remarkable ability to intuit when best to stop by your building in order to ensure they’ll never need to kill your bugs. Whether midway through your daily stationary power-walk—pantsless and hoarse; or meticulously stirring an overflowing cauldron of beans atop your stove (an act that takes the entirety of one's focus and fortitude), you’re usually not able to get to the door in a timely enough fashion to welcome the exterminators into your home.
There have been a few rare occasions when the bellow from the hallway (this is the typical strategy for alerting all of the building’s residents that the exterminators have arrived) comes when you are ready to seize the opportunity and welcome the delightful bug slayers into your home. But these moments are fleeting—golden.
Which makes your forthcoming actions even more deplorable, Virgo.
This week, an exterminator actually stops by at a convenient time. You’re fully clothed, the house isn’t unspeakable in appearance (it still won’t look great), and the stove won’t be cooking even a single little bean. From any vantage point, the timing is perfect.
He’ll announce his arrival via his traditional hallway shriek, and you’ll do something heinous; something disgraceful. You’ll open the door and politely tell him you won’t be needing his services today.
At first the skies were shocked. We couldn’t believe you’d abstain from a life saving service—knowing you’ve no idea when the opportunity may again present itself. After some sky-wide hypothesizing and scathing group analysis, we realized we’d witnessed pure, unadulterated hubris.
Winter has made you cocky, bug-wise. Just because your building isn’t crawling with all manner of horrors doesn’t mean they aren’t lying in wait. Winter is but a mere intermission for the pests of your apartment building. They need to do some costume changes and powder their noses before the second act begins.
The arrogance! The gall! To imagine you won’t have a deluge of bugs come Spring! How soon you forget where you come from; what’s conditioned you.
Last year your building became infested with horse flies to such a shocking, cinematic degree, that you were all but certain there was a corpse amongst your neighbors. You wondered if this was a “if looks could kill” situation, post your week prior glare at your neighbor that chain smokes inside their apartment; polluting your own.
Had the neighbor who always sounds like they’re cleaning glass (hours of whew ew whew ew whew ew) tripped and fallen into their countless panels of glass and perhaps died by a thousand cuts?
Don’t get me wrong, pests can attack in the winter, too. Recovering from the flu a few years ago, you’d finally made the arduous journey from your bed to the kitchen to eat your first solid food in days. Your weary paw grabbed a box of granola bars, but you were overcome with a sudden curiosity about the ingredients, so you turned around the box to investigate. Perched atop the only food in your house was the biggest cockroach you had ever seen (and will ever see. I don’t usually like to reveal too much of the distant future, but I can promise you that you will never see one bigger than that).
Aside from wiggling its cruel antennas at you it remained completely still. You took a different approach, and harnessed all of your remaining strength to throw the box + cockroach across the room. The cockroach scuttled away to set up shop somewhere new, where it inevitably plotted a fresh, clever way to torment you.
I understand your impulse to pretend to be someone you aren’t. It’s intoxicating to imagine yourself carefree—a woman unencumbered by memories of bugs of the past; who’s confident in her unlikeliness to stumble upon a unique pest-related horror every few months until she slowly (and violently!) dies from a spider bite.
I hate to be the one to tell you this Virgo, but the mammoth spider does eventually make its way north—on a mission to kill you specifically. The spider had the press fooled; she had convinced them all she was “harmless.” You were the only one who knew better—so you had to go. I won’t tell you when it’s going to happen Virgo, I want your last couple of years to be filled with ignorant bliss. I will say that spiders are faster walkers than you may be assuming, so live life to the fullest while you can, and never deny the service of an exterminator again.