This house is, um, earthy? There are a fair amount of bugs that are just part of the mise-en-scene here at the house. Most of them I can ignore. Beetles, moths, flies, spiders; these guys aren't trying to start any static. My only real hang-up, is the giant praying mantis that hangs out in the kitchen. This guy isn't sylphlike and green and harmless. It looks like a giant roach with wings and T.Rex arms. And it stares at me while I make coffee or unload the dishwasher, rubbing its Zorak arms together, biding its time. Sjannie can back me up on this.
So imagine my horror when I am sitting on the porch swing, laden with textbooks and notes, and notice that the scourge of my homestead has landed on the window next to me. And it twists its creepy head-part around, Exorcism-style, to fix its sight-orbs on me.
And in a flutter of oily roach-y wings, it dive-bombs my face.
I swat at it and scream. It lands on the window again. It turns its head around. It splays its T.Rex arms like that Jesus statue in Brazil. Again, like a laser-guided missile, it goes for my face.
B has come down to investigate the commotion and rattled, but mostly embarrassed, I explain. He sets out to remove the mantis from the porch cautiously with a piece of cardboard, but we both hear the satisfying crunch of an exoskeleton. He sweeps it into the bushes.
We start into a conversation about what a weird night it is, and our theses, and school, and Athens, but it's obvious I'm still on edge. He says to me, "If it makes you feel better, I'm almost certain I killed it."
From the bushes there's a rustle as the undead mantis rises and lands under the eaves of the roof, right over where we're sitting. Both of us jump up, and B grabs a newspaper, dealing the mantis the coup de grace.
The real victim here is my iPod, the screen of which shattered as I leapt from the porch swing and it crashed into the ground.
How to make an iPod shuffle:
Get a regular iPod for Christmas
Wait three years
Move to Athens
Be a giant baby who is afraid of bugs
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