An Official Hello. There. And a story I just thought of, for some reason. We are traveling and raveling. (So we can un-ravel, later.) (Nothing worse than unraveling when you are at the end of your rope already.) (Need to get some rope. "Get some rope.")
I am out of the Loop, Lupi. I apologize hole-heartedly to people who have sent me PM's and love letters and grant proposals and those typical astonished expressions of my neat-ness. (I am pretty neat.) (Not tidy, though.) (I am a Tidy Bowler, though.)
One time we went camping, to this place called Paradise. (Really. It was a campground.) We camped under a tree, and Mom made Hungarian Goulash on the Coleman stove. She couldn't see real good, as the (blinding and practically useless) Coleman "lantern" was in the center of the table, for equal-opportunity blinding. And the lid-wind shield of the stove blocked the light. Dumb, I know.
We got our Goulash and somebody's bite ~ well, a ghoulash was not a piece of vegetable or meat, it was a big winged thing that had fallen out of the tree. Again, no one could see; so everyone's plates were immediately flipped off the table up over their shoulders into the car windows, tent, and parking lot.
It was a terrible moment.
A long day on the road to Paradise and setting up camp in the dark and no dinner. Not even the adults would eat theirs. It was terrible.
SHRIEKING!~!!! WHAT IS THAT SHRIEKING!!!! OW-WEEE!!
There was a PLOP, and I see now a bug has fallen out of the tree on to the waxy camp table cloth. It was my sister, the ear pain, as she jumped up from the table bench in absolute panic. Let's talk shrill shrieking; at that noise level where you teeth hurt.
(I hate girls. Really.)
I think it might have been her plate that had had his friend in it. That jumped from over the stove, into the moosh in the big cast iron frying pan. Probably the results of highway or domestic struggles up there in the tree.
Sister was about twelve or thirteen, and hysterical. Has been hysterical ever since. Really. Honest.
About an hour was spent calming her down, restraining her, et al.
I was ten or eleven, and skeptical of the bugs being real problems, but even more skeptical of my Dad's "reassurances." He's an idiot. Who just talks and talks, and doesn't have any idea what the truth is; or else he's just a compulsive liar.
Rrrrright. Like he's been here before; and studied the life cycles of these bugs, with the Army Signal Corp. He knows what they eat, and the problem was he forgot they really go for Hungarian Goulash in the dark. "DON'T worry. They never eat breakfast. Least ways, not boxed cereal. Eggs, now they're a problem, if you happen to get up to go signaling."
He IS an idiot.
He just talks and talks.
Right up to the point where the bear has got the refrigerator over his head, shaking the stuff out. Then he jumps in the car. If Mom hasn't locked it. (He told her to. Like I said, he's an......)
I learned not to trust HIM, early. Like I said ~ skeptical.
It's like he gets a certain look on his face when he's flying bullshit, and when the probability is high that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And then every sentence comes with an invisible warning-end he can't see, in just the right pause, that says, ".....uh huh, not trustworthy."
I know you know, I don't have to tell you, that you can't brush big flying-crawly things off the table, to the ground. You know that; don't you. Down there in the dark? Outside that blinding halo of glare? With the pebbles and sticks? The Lumps? The ones you're checking out with your bobby-sox Keds right now?
Wish you hadn't worn pedal-pushers?
In case you "meet some boys?"
See; I know you're stupid; and this just proves it.
I'm flip-flopping between sadistic enjoyment ~ a.k.a. revenge ~ and concern. Quite a bit to take in here. I don't like bugs either; but if they're instruments of sibling insanity, well, who's to pick and choose their friends. I can probably endure them. Longer than her, anyway.
(It's my guess, though, that you guys don't want to know ~ I should steer clear, of describing the forces of unfortunate planetoids that flip off their axis and hurtle towards earth, threatening All Civilization, with a single birth.)
So, I think "Dad" regained "calm" by telling sissy that, "We are NOT moving."
He can get a stern, almost nasty look, this man of a half-dozen faces.
(Love you, Dad. Sort of.)
(I wonder what scares him? Huh? That would be interesting.)
About twenty minutes later, sitting around the table, Dad not having yet the energy to go do a complete pathway and inside/outside flashlight inspection of the tent and tent-causeway ~ stuck in a stalemate of reason, unable to get sissy to the tent ~ with all of us marooned, feet-up around The Lighthouse, the largest beetle I have ever seen in my life, hits the table. I have lived in California, Land of Big, all my life; and I have never seen a beetle as big as a Giant Banana Slug of the Giant Redwood Forest, come belly-landing to a skid on the table. He had wings, but they looked feebly inadequate, something about flight weight ratios; they were way under-sized. Like he has to practically sprained his ankles to land, and was pretty unhappy with Mother Nature. Maybe he has to "take off" from trees he can crawl up. Like a flying squirrel. More of a Landing Beetle, or Crashing Beetle, than a Flying Beetle.
This is not the kind of bug you can smash. Not without a frying pan and a scoop. And flying-bug part screens, set up. He was out of our league, by any means we could connoiter.
(These arid area oasis, who would think they would have the biggest bugs? Huh? Don't they have to be in "rich" areas, like super-market dumpsters? Rat-food-source infested sewers?)
Dad (I think I saw him lean back) refuses to evacuate. He is physically holding my sister's hand; holding on as well to some "biological order of dreams" in which he knows his bugs. (He's a biologist ~ didn't you know? Oh. Neither did I. I thought he was some kind of engineer.)
This bug had me impressed. He's an attention-getter. My A to Z Encylclopedia ~ I don't recall seeing him in there, but I think I should have. I wish I had some reference works right now; or a pizza paddle. He's got lots of parts. Thorax, another thorax, head, wings, legs; and in the front ~ oooh ~ in the front, actually, the front, the mostest part, the most impressive section, was a pincer. A snake and scorpion cutter; a tire-shredder; a veritable logging tool. Bone saw.
Bone chain saw.
Little red-and-ivory bone-bits from the neighboring campsite still stuck to his head.
Bits of skull and hair, stuck to his feet.
(No, the lantern didn't go out; I doubt I would be here to tell you.)
There are those beetles in Africa, I think ~ I think they're called Forklift Beetles, that have that Jaws-Of-Death scoop-loader/slicer-combo on the front; that can flip a Rhino and leave him helpless with his feet wiggling in the air. This is him. He's migrated. Sawn up a raft.
It's an Insect World. Now.
Dad's got his theories, in this theatre of the absurd. As I sit, very edgy and concerned myself, (but not "agape" ~ uh-uh ~ not here) ~ as I sit warily staring at this shiny, fascinating Behemoth, Dad lets loose with his confidencers.
"They don't use those things for cutting stuff. They're just for show. Really. They just eat moss. Or other stuff."
Sounds reasonable; even for him. I don't see how he, Mr Beetle, could really use those pincers, unless he had a job somewhere. I don't see how anything he could use those on wouldn't be something way too big to eat.
Yah.
Yah. LOTS of beetles are harmless. They just scare people. People don't like them, because they look bad. But basically, they're pretty harmless.
I think, "Well, he might just be an acorn eater." But then, jeez, he'd have to open them.....and could mistake a toe for one of those, in the dark, under the table, or in the tent, on the way to the bathroom..... (like I'm going.)
I want some proof, ahem excuse me, and I know he (Dad) has no idea how to get any. My sister is like shaking. She has really had enough. This guy, our Dad, might be a maniac.
He hits upon a Brilliant Scientific Proof. He picks up a Time magazine, that was sitting on the tablecloth, and scoots up to the aircraft carrier's flight deck, gets it there in front of him and pokes at "it" like an anemone (another of his breakthrough presentations); and Mr Big pays no attention. He's pretty docile.
And Dad says, "See?" He's pretty smart, Dad is; or he thinks so.
And Mr Big slowly adjusts his hydraulic levers, with little whirring noises, and then quickly slices through all seventy kaolite pages.
There was a big paved area between the campsites and the highway; we moved across there and put the tent up in the gravel, next to the road. Way out from the trees. Way, way out.
In the morning, the world looked normal. But we knew it isn't. In the Sunset Magazine ~ Western Camping Guide, we scratched a fat line through Paradise.
But we still remember what it was like. |
