BUGS!
BUGS!
Once when I was performing in Oklahoma, I had a close encounter of the worst kind! As I was about to put on my shoe, a huge brown spider crawled out of it! Unplanned contact with the animal world is one of my worst nightmares. Aside from the large, mindless predators who view me exclusively as food, the smaller the creature, the more intense my discomfort.
I certainly have no axe to grind with the wild kingdom. But I believe in detente. You stay in your area and I’ll stay in mine. I’ll even support establishing safe areas for you to live and go about. But I prefer to keep my own human area sterile, thank you very much. I’ve been tempted to buy one of those bug vacuums advertised on television. This device allows you to suck up a spider or moth on your wall with a long tube without having to make physical contact. This is certainly a big improvement over the tissue capture and crush method. You never get used to feeling the doomed little creature’s anatomy in my hand. Unless that is if you’re a psychopath. No, killing from a distance is always the preferred method. My one concern about this device is what happens to them afterward? Do they die right away? If so, how? Certainly the ride doesn’t kill them. Then suppose they remain alive inside the bag and then crawl back out in the dead of night. They could organize a posse and kill me in my bed or worse. They might find ways to vacuum me.
The story of Noah’s Ark is always portrayed in a quaint way with Noah standing near the boarding ramp while lions, giraffes and elephants enter the craft. But you rarely hear about ‘gnat day’ or ‘weasel week.’ It took Noah 200 years to build the arc. In reality, construction could very well have taken just a few years and the hunt for all the reptiles and bugs the rest of the time. Imagine waking up and having Uncle Noah remind you “OK, rise and shine! Today we start the tarantula hunt!” What’s Hebrew for ‘eeww!’ Frankly, if I were Noah, I would’ve sought permission to have some of these booked passengers ride in a separate facility towed alongside me in the ark.
And I wonder if Noah’s kids got impatient. Dad, come on already. We’re not getting any younger here. It’s starting to drizzle. The animals are all gonna die of old age. Noah slaps his forehead and frustration. “I know! I know! It’s the fleas. I don’t know what to do about the fleas. They live about a day and then keel over! And these gnats, forget about it.”
My Oklahoma experience reminded me that our discomfort or comfort, if you will, with a particular creature is quite arbitrary and often based on its looks. Be honest. It’s easier to love a lion cub than a cricket, even though the former represents a greater threat. In essence, our loving or loathing of a creature is uses criteria similar to which prompts people to choose a sitcom with beautiful people over the Discovery Channel. This means a lot, if I’m honest. I will try harder to bond with my cosmetically challenged little spider friends. Yuck!