Kamikaze bug flies into my ear

(628 words)

I wondered what was going on inside the fly’s head as it flew straight inside mine.

Was it a fearless scout? A fugitive? Or maybe a Jedi insect probing Death Star weak spots?

It was an odd sensation because — BUZZZZ!!! — I knew it was going to penetrate my outer ear about two seconds before it did. I’ve heard it’s that way with some combat veterans who say they knew the bullet was about to strike before it did.

I was enjoying respite on the back porch and reading “Into The Blue: Boldly Going Where Capt. Cook has Gone Before,” the terrific, 2002 book by Tony Horwitz, one of my very favorite authors. I was very sad when he died last year at age 60.

Had a fly ever entered his head it would have been treated to brilliance.

What a fly so driven by mission zealotry hoped to find in my head, I have no idea.

I imagine being in my head like being on one of those forlorn wagon trains through desolate stretches of Nevada where all you see for landmarks are the bleached bones of desiccated cattle. No signs of life.

Nearest Sheetz 4.5 miles!

I can’t imagine being inside my head would be very appealing. It’s full of distracting thoughts about things like, well, flies.

It was I who in 2017 after many hours staring out the window came up with the line, “I’d like to be a fly on the wall any time flies on walls express their bafflement why any human would ever want to be a fly on the wall.”

Know what I did after coming up with that line?

Took the rest of the day off!

Yes, I thought I’d expended all my brain power on that line. The tank was empty.

Who thinks like that?

I’ve many, many times been called a shithead and that would certainly attract flies.

But this fly displayed an urgency you don’t see with flies at a poop picnic.

BUZZZ!!!

It was like he was being chased by a posse.

It hit like a meteor strike. I went in an instant from being perfectly relaxed to manic motion like I was in the running for some primitive dance contest. 

I began jumping up and down and batting my head with both hands. From afar, I’m sure it was hysterical.

Understand, I didn’t know what kind of insect it was. Was I about to be stung?

I didn’t know.

I once talked to a stranger — a roofer by trade — who had a bee fly up his nose and sting him. He nearly died.

I told him I could only think of one worse place to be stung.

Well, worse for a man.

The internet is full of stories of insects entering ears or noses to lay eggs or spin webs or just enjoy a siesta.

As I was reading about Cook and his randy crew of situational sodomites, I wondered if the fly was a fearless explorer seeking a comfortable place to colonize.

Honestly, I didn’t think most of these thoughts until after the danger had passed.

After about 30 maddening seconds and with a combination of jarring, prying and pulverization, I was able to dislodge what turned out to be a common house fly from deep within my ear canal.

Still kicking, it fell to the porch.

I felt immediate regret.

I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to attain for inside my head the perfect natural buzz and what do I do when one’s delivered right to the door step?

I squash it with the sole of my sandal. Goodbye buzz!

That’s enough for now. This unplanned diversion’s already set me back and you all know what that means.

I gotta fly.

Related …

Human groomin’ & the evolution of bugs

A bejesus of a wasp sting

The joy of ants on gum

Even stink bugs need love

Wasp-stung roofer story

The story of the fearless windshield surfing insect of indeterminate sex & species

(624 words)

I didn’t notice the stowaway until I began accelerating and when I did I became so mesmerized I nearly drove off the road and straight into a tree.

Some six-legged insect had affixed itself to my windshield and was hanging on for dear life. About the size and stoutness of a kid’s tiny Tonka toy, it looked sort of like what you’d get if you mated a cockroach with a grasshopper. I gave up scanning insect mug shots when I feared I was becoming, well, all bug-eyed.

I’d just turned left out of the Tin Lizzy on my way to Giant Eagle to pick up some lunch groceries.

Was it on my windshield on purpose or by accident? Was it trying to flee an oppressive bug spouse, a real louse? Or was it old-fashioned wanderlust.

I’d be traveling 2.3 miles on Arnold Palmer Drive past Arnold Palmer’s home, office, golf club and enough other Palmer-named landmarks to have me again wondering why we just don’t change the town name to Palmerville.

If the bug was enjoying the scenic ride it didn’t show.

Maybe it was a Nicklaus fan.

I say “it” because I was also unable to determine if it was a male or female. If it had a gender-defining penis — or penises; logically one per each pair of legs — they were so microscopic it was a don’t ask/don’t tell situation.

While we’re on the subject, cockroaches are to literalists like me almost as poorly named as the titmouse, which disappoints on every level.

I was amazed at its ability to stay stuck to the windshield of a car going nearly 40 mph. Each of its six feet were no bigger than a period on a page. How is that possible?

Maybe it had been walking on gum and gotten its feet really sticky.

I tried to divine what was in its heart. Was it sad? Carefree? Do bugs even have hearts? 

Life without a heart or a penis would be a real drag, but that’s from a purely male perspective.

So I make it all the way to Giant Eagle and the bug hasn’t budged. I shopped hurriedly to see if it’s still there or has maybe while I was waiting for chipped ham learned to communicate and convey its intent, kind of like the namesake spider in “Charlotte’s Web.”

I decide if it’s still there I will make every effort return it to its approximate homestead. I envision a homecoming scene where this bug and its equally weird-looking family have this homecoming like it’s the Biblical return of the prodigal son.

And if it’s gone I’ll just try to stop obsessing because, c’mon, it’s just a stupid bug.

It’s still there! Hasn’t moved even a hair.

I begin to race back, which is good, because I all of a sudden have a furniture truck with an impatient driver right on my rear.

My plan is give the bug a jiffy jolt of wiper fluid to gently dislodge it from its impossibly smooth perch. Thus startled, it’ll look back at me and I’ll point to the safety of the sidewalk.

Here’s what happened:

He clung so steadfastly to the windshield I started to get pissed and really blasted the wiper fluid. The fire hosing finally severed its bond and caused it to cartwheel and begin to wildly flap its wings. It rolled over the roof and smashed — SPLAT!— right into the windshield of the furniture truck.

I could tell it was a direct hit by the brilliant arc it made when the annoyed driver used his wipers to try and vacate the stain.

A grand adventure that began with a remarkable feat on one windshield ended with a smear on another.

And now who gives a shit?

Besides, I mean, your basic dung beetle, but that goes without saying. 

Related …

Stinkbug evolution anything but rosy

Bugs are buggin’ me

When houseflies meet barflies

Time to change town name to Palmerville

To Bee or Not To Bee

Bugs are buggin' me

I don’t understand how out of all the world’s winged creatures, the magnificent and the mundane, the one that’s attracted to dog poop and picnics is designated “the fly.”

It’s like calling the common carp “the swim.”

Jeff Goldblum was “The Fly” in 1986 and there hasn’t been a fly swatter big enough for him, and that includes his gargantuan ex-wife Geena Davis.

Insects are driving me buggy even as bugs are incapable of driving me insecty.

I drove my buggy up to the far northern reaches of Pennsylvania this weekend and was chewed upon by maybe a million black flies. I had an otherwise splendid time golfing with my cousin’s husband and his buddies in Warren near the New York-Pennsylvania border.

None of the bug sprays worked, but on Saturday night I consumed nearly a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and the next day none of the black flies came within eight feet of me.

Of course, neither did the white golfers.

It’s one of those parts of the country where black flies outnumber black guys by maybe a billion to zero.

I’m sure there are some local racists who are comfortable with that ratio.

Not me. I’ve never had a black guy try and zoom into my nose, my mouth, my ears, my tear ducts or linger near my crotch while I was trying to sink a four-foot putt for par.

And I’m not being politically incorrect. The nasty little buggers are widely known as black flies.

As far as I know there are no African-American flies, nor white or Caucasian flies, for that matter. It seems odd because there are Spanish flies and they’ve made colorful contributions to history and sex, two of my favorite topics.

In ancient China, crafty warlords mixed Spanish flies with arsenic, wolfsbane (a mountain herb) and human excrement to make the world’s first stink bombs. Why you’d have to mix anything with human excrement to make it smell worse seems to indicate the military-industrial complex were padding defense budgets about 2,000 years before Halliburton.

I certainly wouldn’t want some Chinese warlord to lob one through my car window, but the historical anecdote makes me nostalgic for the pre-nuclear days when wars were fought with what can best be described as weapons of ass destruction.

And on the other usage extreme, Spanish fly is regarded as the world’s oldest aphrodisiac.

Augustus Caesar’s wife, Livia, was said to have slipped Spanish fly into guests’ food hoping to inspire a randy indiscretion she could use for later blackmail.

Marquis de Sade was convicted of using Spanish fly to incite an orgy with prostitutes -- and that sentence features four elements for any really swell party. He was sentenced to death for poisoning and sodomy, but was later freed by what must have been some 18th century version of the Casey Anthony jury.

I knew a nervous freshman in college who was obsessed with trying to obtain Spanish fly for the same reasons as de Sade. He’d convinced himself giving doses of the extract to young women would make their clothes fly off.

When he became frustrated in his pharmacological pursuit, I suggested he try poems and peach schnapps.

I heard he got married and had five kids.

Either way, he never bugged me again.

This is the time of year when I can’t wait for summer to end. The heat’s oppressive, tempers are short, and the only thing more burned out than my lawn is my enthusiasm for doing anything outdoors.

Every time I step outside the skeeters, wasps and flies descend and I commence to spittin’, sweatin’, swearin’ ‘n’ swattin’.

The neighbors must think I’m some kind of sadist as they see me slapping myself to annihilate the bugs that are bugging me.

If anybody ever hits me as hard as I hit myself I’ll start researching internet stink bomb recipes.

You might think from all this I uniformly hate all bugs. Not true. Bugs make the demanding cut in my list of three favorite Americans (Ben Franklin, Mark Twain and Bugs Bunny).

Well, that’s enough talk about insects for now.

I’m busy as a bee and I gotta fly.