Bad Feeling

July 18, 2010 at 10:56 am | No Comments »

Walking into the office with my first cappuccino of the morning, I immediately noticed the disturbing sight of a big black bug crawling up the wall. Actually crawling might be an overly optimistic verb choice. It had made it to about my shoulder height but all momentum seemed to have ceased. As I stared at it, my mind played through the two obvious options. Expected: get a tissue and enrobe it for a quick death. Less Messy: Get one of the cats to take care of it.

Being the squeamish jerk and a user that I am, the latter of course went into motion. I called Alice, who poked her head around the corner. But she didn’t get my point as I gestured wildly at said bug shouting, “Get it. Get it” I thought that maybe I needed to make it move to catch her attention. I know she’s not queasy. I’ve seen her pounce mercilessly on the odd fly that manages to get inside rather than blowing right past our windows into Utah (thank you incessant Pacific winds). So I went to prod it but instead of moving, the thing popped off the wall and fell behind a stack of books.

Maybe it was already dead, I thought as I scrambled to move the stack. When I couldn’t find it, even after repeatedly shaking each book over a trash can, I had to accept the painful truth. The big black bug had escaped my foolish, selfish plan.

Next time, I’ll do my own dirty work.

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