10,000 pgs

I’ve been on a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie kick lately, so I was watching it just now while waiting to change my laundry over.

I had the volume up quite loud, but thought I could hear something from the kitchen. Like someone was doing the dishes. I paused the video, and just as I did, a fucking bird-sized June bug came flying into the bedroom.

Now - I’m typically not the brand of human that has an instant “Kill it!” reaction when a beast is in my presence but this bastard was jetting around with a menace and purpose that years of Anglo aggression would not abide.

With a speed that would startle all but few, I leaped from my bed and reached for something substantial to swing at the winged bitch.

Alas, I came away with the aptly titled A Kamikaze in Her Eyes by Peter Plate. I waited until it was within striking distance… wound up… and CRACK!

If it wasn’t a home-run, it was a solid triple and the third base coach would be hard pressed not to wave me in. It ricocheted off of the wall above my computer, and arced toward me in a cartoonish slow motion, landing right at my feet - laying prone, in that position that all bugs end up in when any entomologist could confidently declare: “He’s fucking dead.”

I then did what any human living in the 21st Century would naturally do next. I pulled out my iPhone and took a picture of the offending bug.

I suppose I thought that living on the 5th floor of a building would exempt me from the nasty business of bugs, and so it never really bothered me that there’s no screens in the windows (which, BTW is a total Vermont thing - there’s no screens anywhere).

What it really means to be on the 5th floor is that only the really big, hearty and probably genetically mutated bugs have the fortitude to make it to my window height.

But now, the bug is dead and I’ve learned my lesson. When the windows are open, the lights go off - so as to not give those ambitious creatures noting to aspire to.