I Adopted a Plant From the Sidewalk Free Pile and It Came With Bugs That Now Live in My Kitchen

I found a couch on the sidewalk once that had a stain shaped like Abraham Lincoln’s profile and I sat on it for five whole minutes before a woman walking her Pomeranian gave me a look so devastating I pretended I was tying my shoe. A couch where people had definitely done unspeakable things. I mention this because it is important context for understanding the kind of person I am. A person who sees things, like a plant sitting on a “FREE” sign made from a ripped Amazon box and thinks, yes, this is for me, this is mine now. I will nurture this abandoned chlorophyll machine back to health and become the sort of person who keeps things alive.

The plant was sitting outside a tudor-style house between a broken book shelf and a bag of old shoes. It had a little tag stuck in the soil that said “pothos” which I did not read at the time because I was too busy feeling like a hero. A botanical rescuer. The Mother Teresa of discarded vegetation.

I carried it home in both arms like a newborn, up three flights of stairs, and placed it on my kitchen windowsill with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for religious artifacts and engagement rings. I stepped back and admired it. I took a photo. I sent the photo to three people. I was a plant mom now.

For exactly two days, it was thriving.

I watered it. I Googled “how much sun does a pothos need” and then moved it five inches to the left. I bought a little spray bottle from the dollar store so I could mist its leaves like a sommelier presenting a wine at a pricey winery. I was nurturing and responsible. I was a woman who kept a plant alive for two consecutive days and I wanted a trophy.

And then I saw the bugs.

Not one bug. Not even a couple of bugs doing something suspicious on a leaf. I mean a FLEET. An organized, militarized battalion of tiny winged soldiers pouring out of the soil like the plant was a Trojan horse and my kitchen was ancient Troy and I was the idiot who wheeled it through the gates while saying “what a lovely gift.”

They were fungus gnats, I later learned, after Googling “tiny black bugs that fly directly into your face with zero regard for personal space.” They breed in moist soil, which means the pothos I had been lovingly misting every two hours was less of a houseplant and more of a maternity ward for insects I did not invite, did not want, and could not remove.

I tried everything. I tried the apple cider vinegar trap, which involves pouring vinegar into a cup, covering it with plastic wrap, and poking holes in the top. This is supposed to lure the gnats in and trap them. What it did instead was create what can only be described as a jacuzzi for bugs. They flew in, they flew out, they brought friends. I watched one land on the rim of the cup, look at me, and fly away like it was deciding whether the ambiance was up to its standards.

I tried sticky traps. Little yellow cards that you stick in the soil. They caught approximately six gnats, which felt like arresting six members of a gang with eight hundred active members. The bugs didn’t care. They had numbers and morale. They also had my kitchen.

I tried letting the soil dry out completely because the internet said gnats can’t breed in dry soil. So I stopped watering the plant. You know what happened? The plant started dying. Leaves turned yellow. The stems drooped. And the gnats? Still there. Thriving. Doing laps around my banana bowl like it was a NASCAR track and they were tiny souped-up race cars with wings.

At some point I realized I was losing a war to organisms with a lifespan of approximately one week. They were outbreeding my capacity to kill them. For every gnat I smashed against my counter with the fury of a woman who had been wronged by a sidewalk plant, fifteen more appeared. I was playing whack-a-mole with the animal kingdom and the animal kingdom was winning.

My kitchen became a no-go zone. Every time I opened the fridge, three gnats flew out like they’d been in there browsing. They were in my fruit. They were in my coffee mug. I found one floating in my water glass, dead, like it had made a dramatic final statement about the quality of my filtered tap water.

I started eating in my bedroom, which felt like a surrender I was not prepared to make. A grown woman, eating yogurt on her bed, exiled from her own kitchen by insects she had voluntarily transported into her home. Free of charge. Via sidewalk.

The pothos, meanwhile, sat on the windowsill looking gorgeous. Green again and shiny, cascading over the edge of its pot like a model in a botanical photoshoot. It was magnificent. It was also a weapons delivery system that had completely colonized my living space.

I considered throwing it out. I stood there with the pot in my hands, ready to walk it to the trash. And I couldn’t do it. Because I had rescued this plant. I had SAVED it. And throwing it away felt like admitting that I am the kind of person who cannot maintain a relationship with a leafy vine that requires almost no effort to keep alive.

So I kept it. And the gnats stayed.

They’ve been here for weeks now. I’ve accepted them as tenants. Unauthorized, non-rent-paying tenants who eat my produce and swim in my beverages and stage aerial displays above my stove every time I boil pasta. We have a rhythm. I cook, they hover. I swat, they dodge. I pour a glass of wine, they audition for the synchronized swimming team in my Pinot Grigio.

My friend Emily came over and saw me talking to a gnat that had landed on my arm and she said “are you okay” and I said “we have an understanding” and she looked at me the way the Pomeranian woman looked at me on that sidewalk couch and I knew. I knew I had become a person who negotiates with insects.

The lesson here is simple. DO NOT adopt plants from the sidewalk. Do not bring unknown soil into your home like it’s a fun little project. And do not, under any circumstances, mist a free pothos with a dollar store spray bottle while imagining yourself as someone who has plants.

The gnats and I will be here. In the kitchen, cohabitating.

And they’ve outlasted most relationships I’ve had in the past three years.

So at least someone’s committed.