Bugs!
I spent the entire day mucking out the house of the garbage and hauled load after load to the bottom of the hill to where the truck was parked. The cabin sat on a hillside, the place to park the truck was a bit lower than the cabin. My legs tired of the hill, but I figured it would help me get into shape after years of sitting at a desk.
I did not know it, but it was customary to burn just about everything in this part of the world. The city where I came from that was not even considered. I mounded everything into a great pile and would take it to the dump once I found out where it was.
By days end I was worn and a bit tired. I wiped the grit off my face with a wet cloth and some water from the year around spring that was at the bottom of the field. I decided I would hike back down to the spring later and fill a jug I had with water for coffee in the morning. I really had no idea if it was pottable, but I drank it just the same. Tasted fine so I deemed it so.
I sat on my crooked stoop and watched the last of the sun melt into the treeline. Soft golden light and fluttering birds with an occasional turkey gobble put a smile on my face. I went inside the cabin. Even though it was spring, the chill in the air made it less than comfortable. I lit the wood stove and immediately found that the rusted through bits spewed thick smoke making breathing more uncomfortable than the cold. I quickly put out the fire and went up to the loft to a make shift bed of a foam padding and blankets.
The loft was smokier than the rest of the cabin. I reached up to open the window next to my bed. I gave a hard tug on the handle and jumped back when the window leaped from its ledge and landed at my feet leaving a huge hole in the wall. I picked the window up and propped it up against the wall then fell exhausted into bed.
I found the padding to be quite comfortable and as I pulled up the several layers of blankets I realized for the first time that this was really my new home. I let the thought flow over my mind as I settled my eyes towards the night sky. From where I lay I had a perfect view of beautiful stars that, without any other competition from any other light, stared brightly back at me. In the silence and tranquility I lay cocooned in my little world taking in the clean air, enjoying the stars and the sounds of the wind filtering through the pine needles. A light breeze ruffled my hair. It was about then that I noticed the flocks of stink bugs flying clumsily through the room.
Stink bugs I have found out are not good at flying. Their bodies too heavy for their wings make their navigational skills off a bit. You could almost see the concentration on their faces as they focused in on their landing. Legs dangling, body hanging they would flap their wings madly only to land inches from their chosen spot often times the landing ended with them sticking to the side of my head. In the beginning of Stink Bugdom, I had the knee jerk reaction of smacking it to get it out of my hair. This does not produce a good result. The other thing about stink bugs is that they are drawn to candles. I am sure they do not mean to land IN the candle, but that is typically what happens to Stink bugs. They see the light and must think it is in the distance. It usually ends with a crackle and sizzle as they become part of the candle. This is visually unappealing. Now, not to talk all evening about bugs, but that is exactly what I bought, a cabin full of them.
I did not sleep well that night. Ants by the millions created new and improved trails that lead across various parts of my body. It was early the next morning when I awoke once again, to something tickling my face. Lazily, I opened my eyes expecting to see yet another ant. What I saw instead made me rocket out of bed, dancing in circles performing some type of heebie-jeebies dance and screaming like a woman.
The thing was the size of a small bird, only it wasn't a bird. It was some sort of grotesque, morbid, beetle type thing with a stature of three inches long and weighing in at three hundred pounds (ok, well, maybe three hundred pounds is an exaggeration, but the three inches is not). Brown with matching, face-tickling antennas it had landed a soft pillow landing, staring me happily in the face and poking me with his antenna (I say he because no woman could ever look like that.)
I went to my dresser and pulled out a pair of long, winter socks, my armor against the insidious bug. I pulled one of the socks up to my elbow and began to approach it. Poised I wondered if it was watching me. I really could not tell where its eyes were hiding (but I know that it probably did have eyes). Sneaking up to it I reached down and grabbed it on either side of its body and gave a shutter and belted out another scream. The thing immediately began to screech a horrible alien sound (akin to fingernails on a chalkboard) and at the same time vibrate crazily in my socked hand. Still screaming (me) and I resisted going into another routine of the dance, I ran to the opening in the wall and gave a great toss. I tried madly to throw it out the window opening, but it's left hind leg had become stuck to my socked hand. This produced a frantic overture reaction in my arm. Nothing happened. The great strength of the bug (or the prickliness of his leg stuck leg) was stupefying. I quickly snatched the sock off my hand and with the dangling bug still attached, and flung both out into the wild.
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