Last night was a very still, quiet night at our house. We share a driveway with our neighbors. Often we see their headlights shine into our kitchen as they return from eating out or a Hokie football game. Sometimes we hear them calling their cat Pippi to come home. All comforting sounds verifying that our world was continuing as it should. Routines soothe, calm, reassure the soul, erase anxiety.
Summer nights could bring their laughter spilling into the yard. “Hey come view the Northern Lights—quickly before they fade away.” “Join us for drinks on our new patio.”
A crisp fall afternoon brought a frantic call from our neighbor. A skunk with an orange stripe down its back was chasing him from his mailbox to his front door. Quite a distance for an afternoon jog. As he passed our front yard, I beckoned him to run inside our house to safety. But he, the neighbor, made it to his front door without being sprayed. The skunk disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Even animal control couldn’t find it. Order returned to our world. The neighbor was safe, no idea about the skunk, but the disruption was welcomed. A little chaos makes you appreciate order.
But last night was different—no headlights beaming onto our yard and sifting through our windows; no laughter drifting over to us; no anxious calls for Pippi. Often she would be at our house stretched out on our deck that the sun’s eastern rays had warmed as they traveled westward.
Pipi headed for our deck—Photo: Grace Youhas
The neighbors are traveling, too. Not west but east to North Carolina, away from us. Ciao my dear neighbors.
Cha-cha-changes have broken the circle, disrupted the routine, prepared us for a new circle, a new order.
Welcome new neighbors!
A different circle is forming, another order is in the works until the inevitable cha-cha-changes sweep over Glade Road once again.
Well, no, I am not talking about Stephens King’s Pet Sematary. The book’s theme that “Sometimes dead is better” rings true for this saga.
Pest Cemetery refers to the interior of our home. It has become an eternal resting place for brown marmorated stink bugs. Armed with a shield-shaped body, these insects have overwhelmingly invaded our house. They suddenly land in the strangest places—on my windowsill, the edge of my wine glass, in my wine glass.
But more than their flying around and landing on my nose while I’m asleep (which can be beyond annoying), they die in weird places. Expiration can occur on the edge of a door frame. They cling vertically as if velcroed to their final resting place. Some meet their maker on my bathroom mirror looking into their own dead eyes. Others give up the ghost on the shower floor prompting me to yell, “Not another one!” I gingerly step around them but vehemently catapult them over the shower door. I do not want to test the reason for their name.
I do admire these odorous, in-your-face insects. While I politely escort them outside, leaving their fate to Mother Nature, my husband throws them in the toilet. “Sink or swim,” he commands. Down they go to a watery death, shrouded in two plies of Charmin Ultra Strong.
Actually, they swim more often than sink. One stink bug endured three flushes before it finally succumbed to the toilet’s whirlpool. Time after time after time, it had slowly crawled up the porcelain bowl. One of its six legs almost touched the outer rim—so close yet so far away. What determination, what grit.
Once when I wasn’t very stink-bug-compassionate because they had grown fond of my glasses, I tried vacuuming one up. It was nonchalantly cruising the hallway, checking out our dust bunnies. My Black & Decker failed to suck up this determined stink bug. What it was holding on to or how, I have not a clue. But it clung to the hardwood floor as if gorilla-glued.
Slowly compassion or maybe exhaustion set in. I carefully transported it to the front walk in hopes that some wren would swoop down for a quick snack. Okay, not the most compassionate move for the stink bug, but I didn’t want another corpse to avoid stepping on. I, might, though, have made a wren happy.
Hopefully, our bugs do not rise from the dead to embark like Pet Semetary’s Gage on a deadly rampage. I’d hate to be in a headline that read, “Elderly couple devoured by Zombie stink bugs.” Might the resurrected bugs come bounding out of our septic tank, ready for revenge? Maybe.
But this entomological nightmare has caused me to think about how we treat creatures that do not have Insta-worthy, “Oh, they are so adorable” bodies or personalities. I’m not sure just how important they are to the ecosystem, but they are alive.
These nuisances do not hurt humans although in Ten-Commandment-plague numbers, they can ruin crops. Many people eagerly feed the cute deer even though an oversized herd can die of starvation or cause devastating car accidents. But an innocent stink bug? Just flush it down the toilet or relegate it to the whims of nature.
Which then makes me wonder—how many people do I flush down the toilet? They don’t look like I think they should look—flush. They “bug” me—flush. They don’t behave as I think they should behave—flush. They don’t believe as I think they should believe—flush them out of my life.
The next time I’m about to quickly misjudge or stereotype someone, before I flush, I will take a moment. Yes, some folks must be flushed from my life. Others will need a trip to my front deck where they can start their search for a more welcoming home. Many, though, I will patiently consider, maybe meet for coffee, perhaps share a walk. Will they flush me or I flush them? Not everyone has to be my BFF or I theirs, but we owe each other respect.
I also owe my stink bugs that respect—if they promise to stay out of my hair. When they die, I will gently pick them up. Their grave will be one of my wastebaskets, neatly lined with Best Value garbage bags. No more watery graves or soggy shrouds.
Glade Road Living 