Us against It

WARNING: Today's blog post many not be appropriate for readers who: (a) love all animals, insects, protozoa, molds, etc., regardless of cuteness level, and believe they deserve all the rights afforded humans, including the right to peaceful assembly and unlimited tattoos, (b) would defend such liberties for these organisms with their life, or (c) have anything better to do than read about our efforts to dislodge a rather large beetle from our property. Also (d) are squeamish.

I say it was a beetle, but it could also have been a gila monster. It was lying on the basement windowsill outside the front of our house. If this had been a movie, and the heroine had come upon such a thing, you would have screamed at her to run -- run to the nearest animal control place, Orkin, the Marines, anyone who would lock down the neighborhood and deal with this menace with the appropriate amount of firepower.

The only thing that kept me from doing this was that the creature was lying on its back, all its legs waving around in the air, trying uselessly to get back on its feet. If it did, I had no doubt it would attack me immediately. In fact, its leg-waving was probably sending some sort of supersonic message to its clan members ("WHEEP! WHEEP! Enemy sighted! Sense hostility toward large, ugly arthropods! Send reinforcements!") They were probably headed my way already.

I did have the presence of mind to take initial precautions: I called Joe outside. (Note: When a spouse says, "I want you to see something," it is never something YOU want to see.)

We stared at the beetle. "It's...it's like a small battleship," he said.

We looked around to see where it might have come from. There was no grass or trees in front of our house. Our eyes strayed toward the large storm drain in the street, in a direct line from where the beetle was. We looked at each other. So that was where his fellow beetles would probably attack from.

We are midwesterners. These things should not shock us. We deal with things like 17-year cicada invasions, in which the navigation system of insects bigger than this beetle fail, causing them to crash haphazardly into buildings, trees, people's hair, etc., and fall apart into their various arthropodic segments, plus some additional pieces. My father would have said that we were bigger than the beetle, and that it was probably more afraid of us than we were of it. Ha! Dad never heard of insect supersonic message-sending capability.

I looked back at the beetle, which was still engaged in sending his SOS. "Do you think we should just leave it there 'til it dies?" I said hopefully. "It doesn't look like it's long for this world." Moving it after it was already dead would involve far less risk of it coming into personal contact with us.

But Joe was of the opinion that if we sent it back to the drain, alive and intact, it might appease the others. We set about pondering the best weapon for transporting it there.

"The shovel," he said. "Get me the shovel." I started inside. "No, the broom," he said.

"Do you want the dustpan, too?" I asked, thinking we could keep an eye on the thing better if it were contained in something.

He looked at me in disbelief. "Do you think I want to get within 6 feet of that thing, let alone 6 inches?"

"But what if it gets caught in the broom bristles?" I like to be prepared for every possible contingency.

He didn't think this was likely. I got the broom, gave it to him, and turned away. Then I thought, someone should keep an eye on this thing to make sure it doesn't end up someplace it's not supposed to, like on me. I turned back just in time to see the beetle land, not in the storm drain, but on the edge of it, clinging to the bars with its mighty Claws of Death, now in a perfect position to exact its revenge on us.

This is also when we should have run. But Joe gave the thing another whack with the broom, and it went tumbling down into the drain. We cautiously peered over the edge. It had landed on its back again.

We have not seen any attack beetles since, although we do not go out after nightfall now. But sometimes we fancy we hear, a little too close for comfort, the sound of a million beetles the size of battleships, getting ready to attack.