Possumblog

The Strange and Icky World of Bugs

Yes, I'm still not blogging. As evidenced by this awful post.

But there was this gigantic derned moth banging its head against my window and those things (moths, not windows) just freak me out. I hate just about any of your large, airborne insects, because they don't have anything on their minds except procreating and flying into your mouth, or both. And moths try to cover by acting like fuzzy butterflies, but that's just as bad, because even butterflies freak me out, but at least they're slow enough to run away from, and they rarely get into the house, and bang their stupid heads against the window trying to get out. And don't even get me started on the giant palmetto cockroach bugs around here.

Anyway, the stupid huge moth was buzzering against the window when all of a sudden, it came down with a bad case of spider web. And so now I get to watch nature in all of her icky grotesque majesty as a giant flying insect does battle with a terrifying tiny spider that's probably a black widow or brown recluse (were I of a sufficiently fearless makeup to determine). About the only thing worse than giant flying insects are tiny creeping merchants of venom who spend their whole day trying to figure out how to build a nest in your ear. At night.

So, the moth gets further and further tangled up, and the spider waits for just the right time to tiptoes over the web to look at what she's caught, and she's as surprised as I am about how this big honking moth got caught, so she deedles around a bit and then runs back to the edge and licks her chops, and the moth just keeps on flopping around uselessly. Then it falls onto the top of the lower window sash, exhausted.

As this plays out, I have to kinda figure out who to root for. I mean, I don't like big flying bugs, but dying by spider bite is a heck of a bad way to go. Then again, I hate big flying bugs, and spiders gotta eat, right? And spiders are very industrious, even if they use their webs to entrap you and make you scream like a little girl. In the end, I figure I'll just let nature take its own solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short course.

I'm just that way, y'know.

So Mothra plays dead for a bit, and the spider gets almost to its underside, creeping along the threads of the web. You can see her playing out a few more strands to tangle up the legs of the moth some more, and then the moth starts wiggling madly again, and this time manages to actually break free of the web.

You could tell the spider was disappointed, but the moth was quite pleased with itself. It just better be glad it fell behind the books on my window sill and I'm lazy (and frightened), otherwise I'd get up and squash it.

As for the weekend past, it was okay. Grocery shopping, laundry, and I took Miss Reba a bunch of roses at work on Friday, because we had been married for 17 years on Saturday. I like her a whole lot, you know.

So that's about all there is to that.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 18, 2008 01:18 PM