An earwig walks into a bar...

One day, very early in my gardening career (last month) it occurred to me that the hundreds of seedlings I had been so tenderly caring for in my guest bedroom, under timed grow lights and oscillating temperature control would not be safe outside. I became riddled with fear and paranoia, obsessively googling any and everything I could about plant disease, unexpected frosts ("What's a frost?" says my husband), rodents, birds, bugs, deer and perennial eating space aliens. Because they do exist. I was prepared, I was educated, I could not be defeated! Then when some persistent creature began reducing my babies to lace at night I proceeded to have a complete break with reality. A meltdown if you will. What? What the fuck?! I built a fence. I amended my soil, damn it! My neighbors likely think we are running a home for the mentally unhinged with the amount of profanity that came flying over the fence that day.
I began to do what any sane human being would do at that point. Armed with gloves, night vision goggles and a profound sense of rage, I set out into the yard one night to catch the culprits in the act. I was certain I would find snails, instead I found something far more heinous.
Earwigs, an abomination unleashed upon this fine earth. Earwigs share a resemblance to the common cockroach, except they go one icky step further and carry around a set of pinchers on their ass. Every bit of research I've come across on the interweb would lend one to believe that they are a gardeners best friend. They supposedly eat equally icky garden pests like aphids and rotting garden debris. That is of course until they have eaten all of the aphids and rotting debris, then they turn to your flawless young artichokes.
Now, I have always been a creature lover. I catch and release any little thing that wanders into the house, have always had pets, and the sight of something hit on the side of the road has the capacity to send me into a deep depression for a week. But these fucking earwigs? They must die. The other day as I shifted my garden hose rack and an family of 50 of them came scurrying out from underneath, it occurred to me that I was not dealing with an ordinary infestation, I was dealing with a god damn plague. These things are everywhere! I can not weed a single bed, lift a single rock, or dig a single hole without discovering an intrusion of the little bastards.
After weeks of counter productively defending my garden from them, it became glaringly apparent that I was up against something far greater than myself. I was up against an unbalanced ecosystem. Setting dampened newspaper traps out at night and burying shallow graves filled with soy sauce and oil only proved to be a fools game. My adversaries cackled maniacally as they devoured all of my bell pepper plants. The defeat was crushing.
Do you remember in that Lion King movie when James Earl Jones was explaining to Jonathan Taylor Thomas about about the circle of life and then Elton John began singing a song about something or other? Yes, well that whole monologue kept running through my head. Something was missing from my yards ecosystem. Something was not taking its place in the circle of... well you get it. Anyway.
One day I took a walk down the driveway to the mail box, when I noticed a set of beady little eyes staring at me from beneath the bushes. Enter the Western Fence lizard, also known as the blue belly. My new best friend, or friends as I should say, because I'm catching sight of more and more of them every day. These guys are ferocious earwig hunters, and highly intelligent because they found my yard before I planted explosives in the center of it and blew it to smithereens. I am, however still protecting my smaller more tender plants by giving them a light dusting of diatomaceous earth in the evening and that appears to be keeping the damage to a minimal. But for now I can and will avoid using chemical pesticide in a bid to keep my new friends busy. I have a feeling that things will get worse before they get better. This battle is far from over, but I'm certainly glad to see a shift in government happening in my yard. LONG LIVE BLUE BELLY!