You know that you really live in a place when you have to do all those things that people do in their homes. Last night, this involved laundry. Tonight, this involved fighting off an intruder. Yes, that's right. Tonight, I single-handedly-- well with the assistance of a cup and some newspaper-- trapped and banished the largest bug I have ever seen in real life.
It all started typically enough. Windows open, sitting in a big comfy chair, wasting time on the internet instead of unpacking my shoes... yes, there are enough of them that they constitute a category of items to unpack. Suddenly, drawn by the lure of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs in the ceiling fan, in charged the culprit. Imagine if baby turtles could fly. That would approximate this thing. You can understand my horror.
But I was fascinated as I watched it hone in on its beacon-- the bright, white light of the fan-- only to be smacked off course repeatedly by the rotating blades. Finally, disoriented to the point of doing the flying equivalent of a drunk stagger, it made its way toward my chair. I jumped up and proceeded to engage in an intensive bug-hunt, as it had fallen out of my view. I located it climbing up the very chair from which I had leaped, and in a fit of resourcefulness and humanity, I trapped it under a cup to let it outside. Yes, I probably gave that thing a heart attack, thereby negating the benevolence of my release plan. And yes, I decided on this course of action mostly because of my concern I couldn't kill it on the first try and my hesitance to squash bug goo into our pretty chairs. But overall, I think I took the high road.
Also, I am never opening that window again, since the bug is deranged and spent the next 10 minutes trying to break through the glass to get back to the light. At least not without a screen that is rated for UFO-sided insects.
