Insects Among Us

When you find an insect in your home, "prehistoric" is the last word you'd want to use to describe it. "Tiny," "friendly," and "solitary" are words that would be at the top of my list.

Yet, "prehistoric" is the word that came to my mind as a giant, brown cockroach-meets-grasshopper being erratically lumbered toward me one morning.

I had just come downstairs and hadn't even started the coffee brewing. I was headed to the bathroom when I noticed that it looked like my dog had beat me to the punch. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of a brown mass in the corner.

"How did we miss that?" I wondered. Both my husband and I had passed through that room the evening before. Neither of us had noticed it.

"Fine," I thought to myself. Not quite the way I'd wanted to start my day, but I'd deal with it.

I stepped out of the bathroom with a wad of toilet paper in my hand to collect the offending turd and it was gone.

"I'm sure I saw something," I thought. "I could have sworn..."

Shades of my childhood revisited me.

"That turd didn't just get up and walk away," I said to myself.

Then it dawned on me. That turd was alive, and likely not a turd at all.

I stepped back and leaned down to inspect the nooks and crannies in the corner from a safe distance. Nothing under the shelving unit.

Was it a mouse? Was it long gone?

I shifted a flat tray that was lying on the floor. Out from under it, the being crawled. It was enormous. Several inches both tall and long.

(As a side musing: How is it that these ginormous beings can be found in the tiniest places?)

I was ill-prepared for such a sighting. In an instant, my flesh rose in thousands of tiny goosebumps all over my body. I wanted to yell, to wake my husband and have him come down like Superman in a cape to deal with the offender. But this thing was coming at me like in a B horror movie.

"No," I thought. "I can do this."

Time was of the essence. I looked down and realized I was still holding the tray.

Down it came. Missed. Down again. And again. And again.

Even once the insect had expired, I was still intimidated by it.

What if it sprang back to life as if to say it was only fooling and it would dine on its human meal now?

I trapped the carcass under a cup and put a piece of paper under it to relocate it. I wanted my husband to see, to know the full bravery of what his wife had done, and to prepare him for the task that would fall squarely on his shoulders should we find more in the house.

When he came downstairs, bleary-eyed from sleep and still in his pajamas, I told him the story.

"Look!" I said, directing him to the cup, pointing to it like a proud child in show and tell.

"This thing?" he asked unimpressed.