I got home from work, and I looked outside.
The sky was black, and the night had come.
It had been raining for hours.
I opened my laptop and downloaded a video showing a bug zap in progress.
“I think it’s in my house,” I said, pointing out the spot where I saw it.
“It’s been raining all day,” the woman replied.
I told her it was not a good idea to open the windows in the middle of the night.
She laughed.
I had just spent an afternoon playing with my kids, and this was one of the first things I thought of when I woke up.
I didn’t realise that there was a bug in my home, or that I would be getting it.
I’d just had a brief chat with a friend and had a few minutes to spare before I’d have to start the process of packing up my belongings and heading to the airport.
I could have packed it up and left it at home.
But I had to leave it at my house.
I needed to know how I was going to stop it from happening again.
I knew I’d need a zapper, and then I needed a zapp.
I got the zapper and started testing the bug.
A few hours later, I got an email from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) telling me that the bug was a “probable cause” for the incident.
I was very relieved.
The AFP had assured me that it would not interfere with my flight.
I hadn’t thought about it that way.
As a new mother, I was worried that it might be a little easier to keep my home safe in the dark.
So I decided to take my zapp out and see what it did.
After three days, I’d discovered that zappers can’t stop indoor bugs from entering your home.
It took a while for me to realise that the zappers had not stopped the bugs from going in.
“They’re like a swarm of mosquitoes,” said Dr Jennifer O’Sullivan, a professor of psychology at the University of Western Australia.
“The insects are just a mass of them.”
The bugs are tiny, about one centimetre across.
But they have the ability to spread by eating the clothes they feed on.
They then travel up to the ceiling of the house, where they multiply and multiply and then move into your bedroom and into your bathroom.
They also infect your bedding, bedding under the sheets, the carpet and furniture, and even the walls and floors of your home, making it harder for you to catch them.
“When you put a zap on, they’re going to die,” O’ Sullivan said.
“But if they’ve got the bug inside them, they can just reproduce and take over the house.”
In other words, zappers are not designed to stop an indoor bug.
They’re designed to make it easier for the insects to enter your home and multiply.
When I first started using zappers, I tried a few types of zappers on my home.
I tried using the spray sprayer.
I also tried using a small amount of liquid zap.
I’ve tried using my husband’s sprayer to get rid of bugs from his bedroom.
I did use a zapped blanket and mattress to protect the house.
But the effectiveness of the zap has been less than advertised.
I think it was the fact that the spray was in the microwave that made it effective.
I’m still not sure how I would have known if I was using the zapp properly.
I have been using it for a few months, and have only noticed it a few times.
I don’t think I would get a good picture of a bug on the zapping mat if I were using it.
As I looked at the pictures, I noticed something else that wasn’t working.
“Zaps don’t really do anything to the bugs,” O ‘Sullivan said.
I would use a towel to put it on.
But in that case, I’m pretty sure that I was just putting the zaps on the bedding rather than on the bugs themselves.
It’s a different story when I’m using a zapping pillow.
I can see the bugs on the pillow, but I can’t see them in the zapped areas.
“We don’t know if zapping the pillow will stop them,” O’s Sullivan said, “or if they’ll still be in there if you zap the zappy.”
It’s also possible that zapping your bed could be more effective if you have a large bed.
If you have big, heavy, or heavy furniture, the bugs might be able to crawl under it and stay.
But if you don’t have any furniture to zap, then you won’t be able zap it.
You might just need to get some extra fabric to make zapping more effective.
But it seems like the zapers are more effective when you don