Buggy Nights
For the past few days, Miss Mina Beana has decided that 4:30 in the morning is the best time to play. This she indicates to us by barking relentlessly until one of us wakes up, stumbles from our bed (while the spouse pretends to be deeply asleep), walks downstairs, and flings open the door to the dog�s bedroom. At this signal, Mina will prance at us with a play-bow and offer us a toy.
We do not play with her, of course, as we don�t have the luxury of sleeping late the next morning as she does, but we end up taking all the dogs outside for an early-morning pee break and then put them back into their bedroom with a treat.
Last night Mina changed her schedule. Apparently she wasn’t keen on the thunder and lightning, and wished to protect us from the elements by barking at it. For two full hours. Occasionally she stopped to take a break, but just as we were drifting off to sleep, she started up again. Eventually she must have been so worn out by the barking that she fell asleep , and it wasn’t a surprise when 4:30 AM came and went with silence from the Bean. By now, however, Chris and I were used to being woken up by her, and we found ourselves lying in bed, waiting for her to bark.
Lying awake in the dark, I was using my time to gently probe a new and suspicious lump on my neck that felt similar to a mosquito bite when — splat! — something landed onto my upturned elbow.
Given time to think about it, I would have assumed my first instinct would be to flail my arms wildly and scream, but instead, I immediately plucked the object off my elbow with my other hand and flung it away from me as hard as I could. I must have still been asleep because rarely do I have instincts that involve helpful, and quiet, behavior.
I sat up in bed and reached for my book light. Carefully, I shone the light down upon the floor where I assumed the object had landed. I was having a flashback to a scene in one of the Little House on the Prairie books, in which Pa awakened in the middle of the night and said to his wife, “Caroline, I felt something chewing on my hair.”
“Most likely it was a dream, Charles.”
“No, Caroline, I tell you, something was chewing my hair. I picked it up and threw it.”
“Oh, Charles, go back to sleep.”
The next morning, there was a dead rat in the corner of the room where Pa had thrown it, and a bare spot on Pa’s head.
A rat was too big for the object I�d thrown, but I was still nervous. Maybe it was a baby rat, or some kind of horrible miniaturized creature.
I got out of bed and examined the floor more closely with my book light. Then I saw it: an insect that looked like an elongated ant with wings. It was lying stunned and motionless, but I could see its antennae still waving around in a confused manner.
“Chris?” I said quietly. “This…thing was on me.”
“Was it a stinkbug?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know what that is, but it looks like a weird ant with an extra segment, and wings.”
Being used to humoring me, Chris grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and leaped up from the bed. Without any further comments or complaints, he trotted over to my side of the bed and looked at the bug.
“Yep, it’s a stinkbug,” he proclaimed.
I got back into bed, still shining the book light at the spot on the floor where the bug was, in case it decided to fly away before Chris could reach it. Chris efficiently dispatched the bug with a well-aimed squish, and dumped the carcass in the trash can.
“They come in from the attic,” he said. This did not prove to be much consolation for me, since our bedroom was essentially already in the attic, with an unfinished section on the other side. Nervously, I shone my book light at the ceiling, half-expecting to see it covered with an array of bugs.
“It smells like fresh pine when you kill them,” he added.
“Then why do people call them stinkbugs?”
“Some people think they smell bad,” he said, crawling back into bed. “But I think they smell nice.”
Posted by: ssjane | August 13, 2004 | 2:29 pm
Posted in: This Life