a small visitor
Last week, just before I hopped in the shower, I noticed a giant water beetle perched on my towel, which was neatly folded on the rack. I don’t know much about beetles. Maybe it wasn’t a water beetle, but it was black, six legs, and about 2 inches long. Anyway, I couldn’t bring myself to kill it and, knowing how cold it was outside, I knew throwing it outside would have been more cruel than smashing it.
It didn’t bother me and, at the moment, it’s just three dogs and myself living in this house. So I left it there. Actually I moved it to the towel I wouldn’t be using when I got out of the shower. I named it Ned. I don’t know why. Ned was missing one toe, not an entire leg, but just one toe. In the shower, I imagined how he could have lost it.
I never shut the door, but Ned stayed in the bathroom for about a week. Every day, as I walked in to turn on the shower, there he was. Sometimes he was on the floor, sometimes scaling the wooden wall of my countertop, sometimes on the shower curtain, but mostly, he seemed to really enjoy hanging out on a damp towel. I always said hi.
Because I’m home alone, I don’t bother closing the bathroom door, even in the shower (actually I blast the record player from the living room and keep the door open so I can rock out). Anyway, for some reason one of the dogs always lays on the bathroom rug while I’m in there, eager to lick my wet feet when I get out. I assumed one day she would see Ned and gobble him up, but one morning I got out of the shower and they were both chillin’ on the rug together. As I drew the curtain open, it seemed as if they were in the middle of a conversation that I had interrupted.
Ned is now gone. I don’t know if he decided to go down the drain, or into the air vent, or into the cabinet, or chance it by heading outside—presumably the same way he got in. I’ve looked and I can’t find him. And this might sound silly, but when I walk into the bathroom, I find myself missing him.
Godspeed Ned, where ever you are.
Explore posts in the same categories: shits and giggles
February 9th, 2008 at 11:11 am
That’s awesome! Even though beetles give me the creeps. Not The Beatles, though. They’re awesome! Ants and earthworms, though, they rock. I dig ants and earthworms (and spiders as long as they are smaller than a fucking dinnerplate and stay on their web eating bugs, not crawling menacingly towards my bed.
Anyway, I feed my cats a lot of raw meat…usually chicken legs. They’ll usually drag it off their plates and go somewhere quiet…they know it’s better than their canned food. They usually eat all the meat and a good bit of the bone. I’ll end up finding pieces of bone and marrow on the carpet.
Sometimes I vacuum it up, other times, I don’t give a shit. Well, occasionally, I’ll have a colony of ants in my bathroom. I guess they’re in the wall or coming in from outside or whatever. One day, they were all over those bits of bone. There was a trail of ants from the bathroom wall out in the hall to the bone and back. I just observed them. I like ants.
Anyway, a couple days later, I noticed the pile of bone bits was quite a bit smaller. A few days later, it was gone. All I could think of saying was, “Amen, little dudes.”
February 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I find myself missing the water bugs I befriended while playing with the hose at Mum’s house; no worries, I feel your sorrow. They should really start a support group for people like us.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Pretty cool Kyle. I am sure that Beetle don’t have toes…it may have been missing a claw and a few tarsal segments off of it’s femur (okay, enough of being a dork entomologist). If it has “swimming legs” (long hairs that came off of its legs) then it is a water beetle. Which is different from a water bug (which Dan befriended) because water bugs live in water and hardly ever leave there except to disperse in flight to another stream. Water beetles don’t really come to land either. But I’m sure it found a safe place to stay and be dormant for a while (becuae they are endothermic…i.e. “cold blooded”)
February 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
….I’ll be sure to give you a complete description next time