to think is to write. This is what i just told [rdct] when he said that i seem like i’m in a weird mood. Which is true! It’s all fucking true! But don’t fucking bring it up to me, motherfucker!
I’m not the type of bitch to be in a weird mood anymore. Or at least not the type who would be in a weird mood and not let others know about it. Like i’ll be happy to let mr [rdct] know about the status of my mental right now. That status is, of course, weird. But the only reason is because i’m in this foreign country which is seven hours in the future. Something something jet lag.
airspaceMore important, and the more constructive thing that i want to talk about right now, is my experience with my first bug in this seven hours future country (shfc).
Last night [rdct] goes to the bathroom and comes out pretty quickly and says
and i say ‘no, of course not, i’m only fascinated by bugs,’ and he makes a classic [rdct] response to the effect of ‘okay bro that’s weird but i respect it.’ You know, the classic [rdct] response when it’s not like he’s judging but still making fun.
Anyway, i’m like ‘let me in there,’ and he’s like ‘it’s a dead roach.’ I go up to it and the first thing i notice is how long its antennae are. Seriously, they were long as fuck. (Note to self is to do some looking into roaches. Learn about their antennae and why they are so long and what they are doing all day with antennae that long.)
So yeah, i look at the antennae and notice how long they are, and in the same moment, i blow a little on it, which is the universal test for seeing if something is alive. It’s like striking a tuning fork. You just hit it and see how it responds. (We are all tuning forks, by the way. Bugs are tuning forks, people are tuning forks, tuning forks are tuning forks.)
Sure enough, it wriggles around a little bit. Or its antenna moved. Just one of them. Or one of its legs mvoved. And then, over time, its other legs started to move as well, and then it was just kind of wiggling all of its body parts around. Then i, like… [rdct] is saying stuff to me through the bathroom door, but he’s semi-occupied with something else at this point, and i feel that feeling where you’re just alone iwith another living being and it’s just the two of you.
So it’s just me and the roach who is, i should have already mentioned by now, turned over on its back next to the shfcian toilet. It’s overturned, and perhaps ready to just lay there and die.
But i (in this moment right now i’m realizing that i may have fucked up somehow by doing what i did) get two pieces of toilet paper—which is an interesting ply— and i kind of just shimmy it under the roach until it’s sitting on the toilet paper. It takes a little bit of pushing it around and stuff, which i feel bad about cuz it’s like ‘oh, i’m maybe making this thing a little uncomfortable when it was just trying to die in peace.’
Anyway, i get it onto the side of the piece of toilet paper and walk out of the bathroom, and that’s when [rdct] says ‘are you saving it?’ and i’m like ‘yeah i’m bringing it outside’ or whatever. Just letting the actions speak for themselves at this point. And i walk it over to the door, keeping my eye on it because i remember the time i tried to save a chipmunk from a pool and i paid too much attention to the appearances for a moment, and that moment is when the chipmunk decided to jump from the ball, and it maked me feel like i had failed it by caring too much about appearances instead of—oh, i don’t know—crouching down to the ground a moment sooner so that it would be able to just scurry out of there….
bad personAnyway, yeah, i open the door to the outside world to set it free and that’s when [rdct] says something like ‘this doesn’t qualify as being a good person by the way’ and i laugh and say ‘that’s not waht this is about.’ And then i deposit the roach on the sidewalk right outside of our door.
(Again, looking back, i think that might not have been the right move. But like …. what was i going to do….. looking back, you know….. i wasn’t quite willing to put shoes on and what, migrate all the way to… the nearest wooded area or something? We’re in the capital city of shfc. Come on now.)
When i deposit it on the ground it’s still overturned. I decide to take it upon myself to…. Well, first of all, there’s a couple about to walk past me, and i don’t want them to see me fiddling around with a roach, so i close the door and watch the couple walk past through the crack in the door. When there’s an opportunity to go back outside, i do, and i use the toilet paper to get a hold of the thing and flip it over to the right-side-up position…… it takes a few tries. I use a few different methods to do it. I try to do the one where you put something into the thing’s legs to see if it’ll hold on, but it doesn’t seem able to hold onto something with its legs… must have been pretty close to dead, i guess……… anyway, i finally flip it up on itsssssssssss right side. It’s sort of just…… tilted to one side, and i’m like ‘damn well maybe this is not the most functional roach anymore. Maybe there’s a reaonson it was lyingggggg, errrrr, on the bathroom floor next to the toilet. Maybe it was doing that becuase it was about to die, and it was just trying to have a normal death process…..’
Anyway, i leave it that way, and that’s how i left it.
•
We left the apartment a couple more times that night, and each time [rdct] would be like ‘oh, is the roach gone,’ and i would look in the spot it was in and say
I think it had overturned itself again at one point by the time i saw it again at the end of the day when it was dark outside.
Come this morning, when we’re ready to step out for the day, [rdct] says ‘oh, it’s gone,’ but i look down more closely and see that it’s still there. And i say ‘well, it’s definitely dead by now.’ And [rdct] agreed. He says ‘yeah, the hot sun…’ and i imagine the life getting drained out of it by way of the sun, if there was any life left in it by the time morning came around, which there likely wasn’t. Becuase that’s kind of a long time. I don’t know exaclty how long it takes bugs to die when their death seems imminent, but for some reason it seems unlikely that it would have still been alive given the state it was in last night… after a whole night.
Anyway, the most exciting thing about it is as follows. I’m thinking at some point that i still haven’t seen any ants yet in shfc. And then, right then, as we’re descending the hill from something built in BC times, i look at something…. it was some kind of piece of wood…. and i see an ant crawling around on it. I can’t quite recall what the setting was or what this piece of wood was. It was some kind of wood plank, maybe, possibly, or something like that, stuck in the ground, elevating the ant to human eye level. And then i’m like ‘oh, hell yeah, my first shfcian ant spotting.’ Because truly i do believe that if you can’t see an ant from where you are at any given time, you’re not looking hard enough. The nearest ant is never too far away, i don’t think. I think they’re on every continent except antarctica. I’m pretty sure.
But yeah. When we get back to the apartment finally after a little afternoon of gallavanting and seeing that ant, first thing i do is, of course, check on the roach. Of course it’s still dead, but i want to, i guess, i don’t know, make sure it’s still dead? Or see if it had gotten trampled or something…..
I look down and see the roach, still overturned, but now it has ants crawling on it. Little tiny ants. And then i’m like ‘well goddamn. Are the ants eating this motherfucker? Is it getting ant-eaten? Is that what’s ahppening here? This thing is getting eaten up by freaking ants?’ I guess so. I think it might be, honestly. I guess it’s true that there are some ants who eat other bugs… i just didn’t know… like, really, a cockroach? Is that really what ants want to eat?
But yeah, that’s pretty much the whole story of the roach.
So far. It might just be a so far kind of thing. Of course, i’ll check on the roach each time i have occasion to do so. I’ll make sure i check out the ants and the roach. Because ants are still the most fascinating creatures to me, and even more so now that i’ve laid eyes on several many ants of shfcian origin.
Incidentally, do you think the shfcian ants have any kind of like different accent, like do their pheromones have a shfcian accent somehow? Like if you were to put them in the same enclosure as ants from back home, would they notice a significant difference between each other? Is this something that’s been studied? International ant relations? Do you think they would have any way of making sense of just how far away they are from each other?
•
eaten by bugsDays go by and i keep checking on the roach. By the time it’s time to leave the apartment for good, the roach has been torn limb from limb, literally, and the ants have carried each limb, one by one, to some undisclosed location. It looks like they have an anthill or some measure of one in a big crack in the sidewalk. They swarm the roach’s overturned belly and hollow it out and rip off all six of its legs, leaving nothing but the exoskeleton and the head, which i guess must also be made of exoskeleton or is otherwise impenetrable (or repulsive?) to them.
The last look i’m able to take at the roach is its hollowed-out, legless exoskeleton banging against the walls of the entrance to the anthill as three or four ants struggle to fit it inside. They must want the whole thing, bones and all, and i guess at this point all i can hope for is that…. shit, i don’t even know anymore. I don’t know if what i did was right. If i should’ve left the roach in the bathroom. But then [rdct] would’ve been freaked out by it, and this whole story did start with me trying to do a solid for my friend before he used the bathroom , right? So if i hadn’t removed the roach from the apartment, i would’ve let down my friend, and then……… i still am in the business of prioritizing humans over roaches, i think it’s safe to say, especially humans i’m friends with. And i’ve been friends with [rdct] for eight years now. Of course i’ll help him out with the roach.
I guess if i’m really looking on the bright side i can see it as a good thing that i did for the ants. At least i’m keeping that little ant colony fed for who knows how long. I looked at them carrying one of the legs and imagined that it might be some kind of delicacy for them. And maybe the roach was able to enjoy one last sunset or some fresh air or whatever. Or maybe the ants started ripping its legs off as soon as I dropped it from the foreign-ply shfcian toilet paper. Shit, i don’t know. You gotta tell yourself all kinds of stories just to get through a single little interaction with a fucking bug. Or is it just me?
postscript