Waving the white flag -- or is that a flyswatter?

Insect invasion at work has reached alarming proportions. Fighting my way through rush-hour traffic is nothing compared to fighting my way from the office door to my cubicle, which is fraught with thick clouds of stinkbugs, large unidentified flying things, man-eating jungle spiders, etc.

Amazingly, I am sometimes the only one to see these things. Others are blissfully unaware of the invasion, noticing bugs only when they reach critical mass, and not always even then.

Joe exhibits this same ability. "That spider's been sitting in the corner over there for two weeks now," I'll say pointedly.

"Welcome to the family," he'll say to the corner.

This state of affairs often leaves me to deal with creatures on my own. By the time I work up enough courage to do so, the bug or spider or whatever has vigorously expanded its family, built several retirement homes, and registered to vote. If I look hard enough, I would probably see them all waving little patriotic flags that say "I voted." It is hard to kill something that is waving a little patriotic flag.

And yet I cannot step on something to kill it. I have to use something that is not an actual part of my person, such as a flyswatter, a log, an I-beam, etc. OSHA rules unfortunately prevent me from keeping an I-beam in my office space, even if I fervently promise never to use it on a fellow worker, so I must make due with a flyswatter, which is like cutting timber with a Playskool saw, only less effective.

Over the weekend the insects at work solved my dilemma for me, having apparently engaged in an Insect Armageddon that left both sides, as far as I could tell, extremely dead. My trusty flyswatter and I gathered up and buried the war dead in various wastebaskets -- although not the one in my cubicle -- and found one wounded among the fallen, which, as there was no infirmary set up to provide care, we promptly put out of its misery and deposited in a watery grave.

Later I encountered what may have been a survivor of the carnage, a stinkbug, which like all stinkbugs has the appearance of a tank and seems well-suited to war. I didn't have the heart to kill it, and besides there was no I-beam handy, so I saluted as he went by and set off to, I assume, start building retirement condos.