Subscription to Mow Your Lawn and Kill All the Ladybugs

The economy is bad so there are wasps at the front door and I eat in the cloud

On the day after the Liberation Day, after the president had announced tariffs on 90 countries, the bug man knocked at my door. He was an Asian guy who spoke like a frat boy. He wore a uniform that neither communicated authority nor indicated any utility. It was teal or blue or something in between, and was designed by an elder millennial who found the hotel uniforms in Grand Budapest Hotel charming.

There was a small wasp nest right under the awning of my front door, right above where the bug man stood, so I entertained the conversation in the hope that I'd be able to take care of that pesky problem for $50. I asked, “How much for getting rid of the wasp nest?” He took out a giant flyer from his bag, not that dissimilar from the giant board I saw the president hold the day before on TV >>>> except that, in place of names of countries and tariffs >>>> it listed different kinds of pest‑control subscriptions I could buy and their respective prices. The lowest subscription tier was $160 for two pest‑control visits a quarter. Then he added, “Your neighbor Matt just signed up with us, so I'd be willing to give you a discount, since I can take care of all the houses in the neighborhood at the same time.”

I said no because it was the second time in a week that someone was trying to sell me a subscription when all I wanted to do was give them money to take care of a ONE TIME problem. Earlier in the week I called three lawn mowing services, who all said they would MOW MY LAWN FOR A SUBSCRIPTION. The bug man nodded, “I get it, the economy is hard, but how about I give you an estimate of how much it would cost to do your whole house... you know, just for the summer.” I agreed. He seemed earnest; besides, I guess my neighbor Matt or whatever must know what he's doing.

Soon we were in my backyard. The size of my backyard is too big for the tax bracket that I am in. He looked around like a frontier man who had come across new territory and said, “We have this chemical that can seep into the soil and TAKE CARE of any bugs and roaches.” He then dug his hands into the soil near the foundation of the house and said, “Mm, ladybugs... we can KILL ALL THE LADYBUGS too.” My neighbor Matt must be a strange guy, I thought. Who wants to genocide ladybugs in the backyard?

The bug man made up some numbers again, and I said no again. “I GET IT, the economy is hard, everyone is struggling—how about I give you another discount,” he replied. This continued on. Every time he lowered the price he made a point to tell me, “I get it, times are tough for you...” At some point I told him I'd give him my email—the one I usually give to people I never want to hear from again—if that meant he would leave. He agreed and then slyly tried to fool me into signing up for his service when I wrote down my email. This is probably what happened to my neighbor Ma... well, I guess that's when I realized that THERE IS NO MATT. Bug man just used a name that was a sure bet for an Austin neighborhood, and I fell for it. The oldest trick in the book. THE MATTENING. I said no again. I could see he was frustrated. If he had his way, he would evolve like a Pokémon and then crush me like a bug.

The wasp nest stayed the same size. Perhaps just catching a whiff of the bug man was enough. I found the interaction with him unsettling and kept thinking about it for a the next couple of days. Maybe it was the uniform, or the way he talked as if he were a puppet with a frat‑boy voice chip installed.

A few days pass; spring comes, its beautiful and I start to see more bugs around the house. Everything just violently reproduces now. I decided to get takeout on a lovely evening when I should have been out and about in town. I figure I should at least try something new to offset the loser energy I was giving off on such a wonderful day. So I found this Vietnamese restaurant. It had all the signs of a good Asian restaurant—It was on the outskirts of town, in a strip by the highway, and was called Nancy's Kitchen. As I got closer, I realized I'd never been to this part of town. I pulled into the strip off the highway. Instead of several stores and a parking lot like I expected, I found a single monolithic building with no windows.

There were people bustling about at the entrance, like wasps around a nest. I got out and saw that the monolith had a name >>> FOOD & CO. I wondered what the & CO stood for. The inside looked like a dentist's office, except it's less well lit. I recognized the names of several restaurants I'd seen on DoorDash before. All of the restaurants had ethnic‑sounding names, but the food was made by the same Hispanic men and women. It was a cloud kitchen. I felt sheepish ’cause I was the only one who was confused, while everyone else there was a DoorDash delivery driver. I felt relieved when I caught a 50‑something man looking equally perplexed as an employee informed him that he could not eat at this restaurant; it's takeout only.

Here's how you pick up food at a cloud kitchen: There are several rows of tablets with their front cameras turned on. I held up my phone screen with my order in front of one of them. The tablet told me that my food was in locker D2. That's when I noticed the row of lockers on site—eight in a row, and a total of four rows.

I walked up to D2, opened the locker, and there it was: the HEAD OF THE BUG MAN, just sitting there in the locker. “I get it, times are tough, you thought you could get some Asian food for cheap,” the head said in that familiar frat‑boy voice.

I think this pairs well with my other Slop Horror essays:

Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo