By Jennifer Carrasco

Nah, it's not the Beach Boys. It's the march (only I can hear them) of thousands of black ants crawling up the corner of my West Seattle kitchen. It's the scratching of Wolf Spiders trying to escape my bath tub. Or the rasp of a tiny black cricket behind my bookcase.

I've fostered a mostly live and let live philosophy in my house and garden, No pesticides, no herbicides nor chemical fertilizers. I've lived to 83 without too many major health disasters and don't want to invite trouble with anything other than a quick spritz of Clorox or a swipe of vinegar.

But my love of nature evaporates with cockroaches and rats. Vile, furtive creatures that raid pantries, cluster around cat food, and skitter around in the night. Roach hotels for the cockroaches, and rats to be drowned or whacked with a shovel. And yellow jackets will be dispatched with Dawn dish soap and a shop vac. I  admire the wasp's elegant outfits of yellow and black, but I'm allergic to the creatures, and it's either me or them.

Even in the Philippines, which has more than it's share of crawling, biting creatures, I was neighborly with almost any animal house guest. There were the usual dogs and cats. I like dogs and cats in a kindly pat on the head way, but was never passionately attached.

And there was Mr. Jack, a tortoise who wandered freely around the wooden floors of our house and liked dog kibble. He would chomp on a kibble and half of it would fly across the room. He often startled our guests when he ambled into their shower.

Sometimes a bat would find it's way into our house, and make itself at home in a corner, a little clot of black in our 14 foot high whitewashed walls. Rabies was endemic in the Philippines, so I would call Animal Control and they would net the small creature. I hope they released it.

We coexisted happily with the tiny lizards traveling around our walls, eating spiders and mosquitoes. One unfortunate little lizard fell into our toaster. My breakfast toast smelled terrible that day, and when I tipped over the toaster, there he was, Mister Crispy Gecko.

We said goodbye to our lizards, but the ants and the rats will be living wherever humans live, except in the North and South Poles. We have plenty of ants and rats in West Seattle. 

And Mr.Jack? Sorting our household goods for packing out, I had propped a large mirror against the wall and I caught Mr. Jack staring mournfully at his reflection.  

We released him in a spring near the Air Force stables. As a poetic gesture, I threw flower petals on the water as Mr. Jack swam away in search of better food than kibbles, and a true love better than his own reflection. He didn't give my son and me one backward glance.

Jennifer Carrasco is a longtime West Seattle resident and internationally recognized muralist whose work combines historical depth, mythic storytelling, and botanical elegance. With decades of experience painting large-scale trompe l’oeil and chinoiserie murals for clients ranging from Tommy Bahama to private collectors, she brings a distinctive Northwest voice to decorative arts. Her artistic journey has taken her from Peace Corps service and teaching in the Philippines to NEA residencies across the globe, and long ago she chose to make West Seattle her home.