I’m in Tennessee now and it’s stinkbug season…I used to think I could be a naturalist, but one problem always prevented me: INSECTS.
I wrote an essay about this problem during graduate school. We were discussing nature writing, and I decided I would try my hand at it. My mentor loved this piece entitled “Insect Armageddon.” I hope you enjoy.
Peace, Olive Twist!!
~♥~
C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist, believed that animals go to Heaven when they die, because Isaiah the prophet speaks of the Holy Mountain being inhabited by more animals than humans. Someone once asked Lewis, “If animals go to Heaven, what will become of the mosquitoes?” Lewis replied that “A heaven for mosquitoes could be combined with a hell for man.”
I can attest to the fact that such a place already exists, where men are tormented for their sins and insects have dominion: the state of Florida. Many northerners have discovered this punishment at the time of their retirement, having thought they were moving south to tropical paradise and Jimmy Buffet songs.
I will not even embark upon issues such as the relentless heat and no seasons, the hurricanes and power outages that follow every storm, the wharf rats, the stinging jellyfish, the rabid raccoons, or the water moccasins that lurk in lakes, awaiting some brazen tourist who might decide to skinny-dip. I will tell only of that which I despise the most: the bugs. I have always despised bugs and regard them with a mixture of contempt and dread. Every autumn, I begin to pray for a winter harsh enough to send them all into early graves.
One summer my sons and I moved to Oregon, because most of our relatives live on the west coast and the weather is milder. After about two months there, I asked my young sons what they missed the most about Florida. My six-year-old quickly replied, “I miss the giant rhinoceros beetles that crawl around the parking lots, and those big locusts that are green and yellow and orange with zebra stripes on them.” His big blue eyes were glowing with purity.
“You miss those?” I asked, trying not to look disgusted. “Not me.” I mumbled a prayer that we would never go back, but we unfortunately did.
As we drove back into Florida, I opened the car window and could hear the cicadas chirping loudly in the trees. They’ve been waiting for me, I thought with horror. They are like giant flies that are naturally attracted to long hair, and nothing is worse than trying to shake one out while it rattles like madness in your ear, and you shriek and do a nerve dance until it falls out.
But the great demon of the south is the roach. Some of them fly, such as the giant palmetto bug. Once I lived in an old two-story house with a group of friends, and a man was cooking spaghetti and garlic bread in the kitchen. He had a neat stack of bread on a corner of the table and we noticed a huge roach on the ceiling several feet away. Its antennae were shaking excitably, and it suddenly did a sky dive with no parachute and landed perfectly on top of that tall bread castle, where it seemed to be quite content with its plunder. I did not eat that night.
Most roaches crawl with wriggling hungry antennae in garbage cans, on kitchen counters, and through windowsills and crevices. In the middle of the night, when you go to the kitchen for a cookie and milk and you turn on the light, they flee like desperate soldiers behind the fortress of the stove. When you open a cupboard in the daytime, one might rustle behind the sugar bag, or you might spy their eggs like tiny white bullets in the corner.
Once I was lying in my bed, and I heard a sound as soft as silk slippers on the venetian blinds over my head. I leapt from my bed and cut on the light, and was amazed that I had even been able to hear it. The roach, I mean. My ears are ultra-sensitive to insects, especially roaches. I wake up everyone in the house for such occasions, and won’t let anyone rest until the skirmish is finished and the culprit has met his demise.
The pest control man can’t stand me. I laugh with victorious delight whenever his Ghostbuster truck pulls into the driveway with its giant canisters of poison and ammunition. I call him any time I see one bug, and I make him spray the whole house again, since it is included in my service agreement. Though most people have switched to annual pest service, I expect my house to be sprayed once per month inside and out. I let him know when I think it’s time for more bait behind the kitchen drawers and under the sinks. I know he gets sick of dealing with me.
I can’t leave out the termites and giant ants. I called the termite man to come and tell me about a tree that looked like it was dissolving to sawdust all by itself. He looked at it and said, “I can’t do anything about that tree, because it is within three feet of your house, and we don’t do indoor service for you.” So I called the pest control man, and he says, “I can’t touch that tree because it’s not part of the house. So the bugs have all figured out where the no-kill zone is, and they continue to prosper there and raise their families. I once thought it would be funny to put up a “roach crossing” sign in front of our house.
Should I embark upon the subject of mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria, yellow fever, encephalitis? Or have you ever awakened to find a tick burrowing in your flesh? How about those wasps with great stingers and long legs that hover around the eaves looking for a victim?
Once I had a crazy dream that I was looking with curious disdain at a display of insects in some laboratory. As I analyzed one big furry bug with wings pinned to a board resembling an insect Hellraiser, the bug suddenly squirmed and opened its eyes and started talking. I jumped back in horror, as it told me about the injustice and misfortune of its life and how it ended up being nailed by some entomologist. It was like a horror movie scene and I woke up sweating and feverish. I wondered if I was like Hannibal Lechter to the bug world.
As I sat shaking on the edge of my bed, I thought: Perhaps I have misjudged these little creatures. Perhaps they are only innocent civilians. Perhaps they are really cute and cuddly if you get to know them.
One tiny baby roach wriggled on my dresser. I grabbed my hairbrush and smacked it into eternal bliss. No, even my Quaker beliefs must be suspended for this war, this enmity. I cannot love these hellions in paradise.
(See Isaiah Chapter 11 and The Problem of Pain, chapter 9)
Drifting into the Divine ~♥~ 