Contamination!

My bonsai has parasites.

It's covered in these tiny little white powerdy bugs that make all the new leaves come in crumpled and discolored. And just in time for plant swimsuit season! That means I put the plant outside on the fire escape so it can exchange psychic signals with all the other plants, or however it is that plants communicate. As a bonsai, my plant is delicate and well-bred, like a senator. Having it out in public when its crumpled and discolored and swarming with bugs is simply scandalous! Not NSA-spying scandalous, just something in the area of tax evasion or Joe Biden.

I understand it's pain. I grew up in a rural area with little adult supervision, I caught weird parasites all the time.

Dramatized here.

Those weird sour purple things on that one bush were just so delicious! Well, not really, but the other kids were eating them and I wanted to be popular. And why go all the way back to the house to use the toilet when there's woods all around me? God knows how many times I came this close to catching some disease that only cows get.

The guy in the flower show who looks like a Sopranos extra told me that my bahn-zai probably has whiteflies. He said I have to throw away all its old dirt, wash its roots and leaves and pick off the bugs by hand, disinfect the pot, and then replace the whole shebang with new bahn-zai soil.

Here I though I could spritz the bohn-sai with some mild poison and call it a day. It's like having head lice all over again.