A Story with Legs
Quit Bugging Me
A giant arthropod darkened my door: It was an epic standoff
The other night while walking past my upstairs guest room I spotted this enormous black bug with loooooong legs. I froze, feet glued to the floor, eyes glued as it crept slooooowly along the door jamb, its antennae twitching.
It was within easy reach. All I had to do was run downstairs, grab my fly swatter from under the kitchen sink, and whack it.
But no, wait. I’d just come back from a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru, where our spiritual guide reminded us that all life is sacred. Every creature, every blade of grass is part of a larger whole.
If I wanted this gigantic beetle-thingy gone, it was my duty to gently remove it to the outdoors, not murder it.
But no, wait. This humongous beast had invaded my home. No mercy!
As my thoughts ping-ponged, my boyfriend, J., called. “There’s a giant bug on the door jamb!” I whined.
I took a picture of it and texted it to him. He lives more than a half hour away, and was in his car, closer to home than to my house. He was amused, though not sufficiently sympathetic, in my opinion.
J. is not Peruvian but he also believes all life is sacred and regularly refuses to kill any bug that creeps or crawls indoors. He once tried to shame a fly swatter out of my hand as I prepared to stun a stink bug.
I, the Anal-Retentive Exterminator, prevailed: A swift smack, a swiping up of the carcass into a tissue, then into a piece of tin foil, a rolling of the foil into an airtight ball, and a popping of the ball into the garbage can a la LeBron James.
But now, I hesitated. Had I not just communed with Pachamama, Mother Earth, atop a majestic mountain in the Andes? Had I not felt small and insignificant in the scheme of things, yet part of the larger whole? Did this creature and I not have the same right to exist?
I expressed my ambivalence about killing it, but also my fear at having this ginormous vermin, that was clearly intent on terrorizing me, mere steps away.
“All life is sacred, all life is sacred…” I repeated, mantra-like, like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. (“I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks…”)
J. started giving me advice on how to safely scoop the huuuuuuge intruder into a towel, which could then be transported outside. That was a hard no, as it required getting too close to a moving arthropod that I had not yet determined was unwinged.
He finally offered to drive down and do the deed. I breathed a sigh of relief. Help was on its way!
While I was waiting, I kept my eyes glued to the creepy-crawler. He (or she? No, definitely he) was moving very slowly and hesitantly, like a dying Charlotte on her last spidery leg waving a final goodbye to Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web.
Suddenly, he fell to the floor and I let out a strangled scream. Where was he? His dark brown body landed on my dark brown floor and I lost track of him. Then I saw movement. He was crawling, pathetically, in circles.
I ran downstairs and grabbed a small plastic container and placed it over him. He was going nowhere.
All that was needed at this point was to slide a piece of paper under the container and walk him outside. Sure, I could have done that. But J. was only five minutes away at this point, so I waited and let him do the honors.
He placed him on the front lawn, which was still half-covered in snow from a recent storm. And where it was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Did we really “save” his life? Or deliver him to a bitter-cold Arctic tundra where he would slowly freeze to death, like Jack in The Shining?
This troubled me. He was not long for this world anyway, I rationalized. And it was good for me to practice compassion toward lesser beings.
Maybe next time I won’t be so paralyzed by fear.
Maybe.
