All things brown and beautiful, all creatures great and small....
June 5, 2006 at 0:59 As regular readers know, here at Chez V, I share my living space with Greenies. My family members never found a living thing they didn’t want to nurture. They have the patience to suspend a moldy avocado pit in water for six months and wait for it to sprout. They operate a plant intensive care unit where there’s no such thing as death with dignity or a Do Not Resuscitate Order. Heroic measures are taken every day to keep spindly, anemic-looking stalks out of the compost pile. They also sweep spiders and ants into dust pans indoors and carry them carefully outside to live long and prosper.
I try not to get annoyed with all their green-living, life-affirming, touchy-feely behavior, but in comparison I’m a bitch that loves the smell of napalm in the morning. What can I say, I’m a “live well or die” kinda gal. And when it comes to insects, I will do no harm to them outdoors, but if they try to get friendly and come into Chez V like a backdoor neighbor, I go all psycho on them and administer the V-Grrrl Foot of Death. (Much to E-Man’s chagrin, I leave their carcasses wherever they fall, like trophies to be admired. I love to see a swaggering spider go two-dimensional when he enters my turf.)
But despite my Apocalypse Now mentality, I would never kill Jessie. Jessie is E-Grrrl’s pet beetle. She lives in a container with a magnifier built into the lid so you can admire her in all her glory as she burrows into dry oatmeal and eats brown apple slices. She has NINE brothers and sisters.
Yes y’all, I am living with a terrarium in MY DINING ROOM that is full of “beetles” that look like ROACHES. And my darling E-Grrrl LOVES them.
Jessie was part of a class science project, and little E-Grrrl has had her since she was a mealworm. You know what mealworms are—they look like maggots who have used self-tanner. They’re what crazy people buy to feed to their pet REPTILES. (I know, who am I calling crazy? Me, I’ve got pet BEETLES and plants on life support in my house! Not to mention a pink-tailed, heirloom-eating rodent! GAH!)
Jessie’s transformation from mealworm to beetle has been lovingly recorded by little E-Grrrl in her pretty pink and green Mealworm Journal. In the beginning, E-Grrrl, like a seasoned biologist, notes that on April 27, Jessie is 2.5 inches long, has 13 segments, two antenna, six legs, and is tannish. (Pardon me while I say “Ewwww!”) Then in a break from scientific objectivity, she notes that Jessie is “very still and sad.”
On April 28, E-Grrrl continues to act as a budding biologist and grub psychologist by noting: “We put our mealworms into a box. I observed that Jessie loves the corner of the box. I think she is shy and scared. She is so cute!” (“Ewwww!”)
Over the ensuing days, E-Grrrl chronicles Jessie’s reaction to light, wet vs. dry surfaces and writes several times that “Jessie does not like to move” and “Jessie is turning white.” (Thankfully, she does not say “Jessie is lazy and pale, just like my mama, who is white and does not like to move.”)
On May 12, E-Grrrl notes, “Jessie is turning into a beetle. She looks very cute.” This is accompanied by a sketch of a six-legged icky brown creature with pronounced antenna. (“Ewwww!”)
May 16 entry begins “Jessie is a BEETLE!” and ends with “She is big and cute and black.” (Hmm, she looks like something that would crunch and stain the floor should she have a personal encounter with my Minnetonka Moccasin of Death.)
The project is officially over. However, E-Grrrl, in a variation of the Stockholm Effect, has bonded with her subject and does not want to let Jessie be set free to eat compost outdoors at school. No, she brings Jessie and many of the other children’s science-experiments-gone-wrong to Chez V to be petted, held, and fed fresh produce.
Late at night, I’ve seen the beetles bumping uglies and know that soon E-Grrrl will be setting up a pink and blue mealworm nursery. (Ewww! Why don’t bugs ever suffer from unexplained infertility? Creatures without brains are the perfect candidates for meaningless sexual relationships. Insert your own Kevin Federline joke here.)
While E-Grrrl helps the ROACHES (I mean “beetles’) live happily ever after in the presence of rotten potatoes, Mr. A., my 10-year-old son, is tending two aquariums full of pond scum and tadpoles. He’s feeding them chopped steamed spinach and they’re growing rapidly in their slimy environment. (Ewww!) They’re all squirmy and desperate and look like giant sperm on steroids. I have to resist the urge to snare them in a condom and flush them down the toilet.
With the tadpoles developing tiny appendages, we’ll soon have frogs at Chez V. Many, many frogs. This means Mr. A will be out with his bug net catching flies and mosquitoes for them to eat. Unless of course, they (ahem) like mealworms and beetles, in which case, life at Chez V would start to make more sense to me.
Ah, the great Circle of Life. I wonder if cats eat frogs? If not, maybe our French neighbors do.
© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.
June 5, 2006
Reader Comments (7)
I think I like this picture better than imagining you scrunching them vermin to death.
:-)
I can't imagine willingly keeping creatures in your dining room that most people pay to have removed.
E-grrrl's journal entries made me smile. We need pictures of Jessie! Too funny.
I must say, frogs I actually like. I'll take frogs over grubs any day.
I suggest you have E-Grrrl engage in a scientific experiment with potential commercial application: do cats prefer the taste of frogs to the taste of (for instance) hamsters? Each critter would be contained to prevent the cat from going for the easier prey, and the data can be sold to commercial cat food companies (NEW! Meow Mix now in Yummy Frog Flavor!). You'll have a vermin free house and be setting E-Grrrl up in a profitable career all in one fell swoop.