palace of winds

Thought process, upon seeing the second box elder bug in two days
(box elder bugs being equivalently scary to spiders,
generally moving less slow but being the stuff of recurring nightmares):

Ohmigod it’s another one.

This won’t do.

This won’t do at all. I need to find out where they’re getting in.

I wish I knew someone who could tell. I wish I knew a guy. An exterminator-guy, who would come in and check my whole place over. Make sure the windows are closed right. I would make him dinner. He’d be hot. And he’d fix this.

Okay. Okay. It’s on the blinds, can’t squash it. The vacuum.

Still packed. Is the suction strong enough? What if the vacuum doesn’t work and it attacks? Do I have time to find it and unpack it? There is a hose on it, right?

Okay. I’ll get the vacuum.

I wish I had Raid. I wonder if there’s a more environmentally-friendly way to kill them. Quicker. Painless. There must be a natural bug-killer of some kind. I need to look into that.

I’m such a pansy. It’s just a little bug. It’s more scared of me blah blah. I’ll get a paper towel. Enough of this vacuum nonsense. I’ll just squish it. It won’t be the end of the world if it touches me. Nothing will happen. Okay, paper towel. Squishing now.

. . .

Maybe it’ll climb onto the paper towel. I can take it out to the hall. Except then it might come back in. I’ll take it far out in the hall.

The paper towel’s pretty floppy. It’ll be really near my hand, if it decides to attack. Maybe some cardboard. Like this box! It can crawl on this box.

Okay, it’s going on the box. On — the box, right. Slowly now, over to the door. Open the door, don’t lock myself out, take it in the hall.

This isn’t so bad. This isn’t bad at all. I’ll release it outside. It’s just a poor confused little bug. Who cares if I’m in my pajamas, I’ll just open the door a second and it’ll go off into the nice outside world.

It’s not going off. It’s clinging to the box. OMG where is it?! Still on the box. Get it off, quick quick — fuck.

* * *

So, after the whole ordeal of getting the thing outside, I accidentally squish it on the sidewalk.

So much for being a humanitarian. (Bugitarian? I’m sure there’s a scientific word for bug, I just can’t recall it right now.) At home I’d use my dad’s shop-vac. That thing could suck up bats, y’all. (And oh god wasn’t that quite the evening.)

Another side-effect of living on my own, I suppose. I’ll be forced to get over this bug thing even more. Though there’s a time element to bug capture that’s forced me to deal with them plenty in the past.

Ugh, now I’m feeling all kinds of creepy-crawly all over my skin. I should clear off part of the couch and curl up with a book. Or a movie. And a nice concealing blanket.