Brave Is Not A Word I'd Use to Describe Myself

So lately, I have had this thing about insects. I just don't want them around me or in my home at all. They are too fast and crawly for the most part. Spiders are pretty bad, but worse are roaches and house centipedes and silverfish and such. Ugh.

I actually sprayed insect poison all over the house a week or so ago, along the baseboards and windows as an additional protection against insect invasion. Normally, I rely on a forcefield of pure willpower to keep them out. It doesn't always work out very well, sadly.

And the worst is when I find insects in my bedroom. Ever since I was a kid, if there was a spider on the ceiling way off in the distance, I would just go to the guest room or to the couch in the living room and try to sleep there, after the tremors and sporadic flailings went away. Because, of course, I can't ever actually kill any of these offending insects! Oh mercy lord no.

See, the killing aspect, it just is not my style. They aren't harming me. They have their role on the planet. And I don't want to get close enough to them to actually physically touch them. What if I failed? What if I missed and it got ON me? What then?! I will tell you that nothing good would come of that at all.

I think that actually stems from the time when I was like seven and decided to kill a spider with a tissue, but the spider was WILY. And EVIL. Because it dodged around the tissue and wound up running up my arm. I flailed wildly, it was thrown from my arm, I cried a lot. Such was my trauma. I think it must have been a magical wizard spider. Dark wizard spider...

Anyway, I just went in to go to bed and as soon as I walk into the room I know something is.. not right. I look at all corners of the ceiling. Nothing. But then I see it, there on my bed... on my PILLOW. A dark oval shape. A dark oval shape that should not be there at all. Long antennae! I panicked at first. A cold dread choked me right in the throat/heart area. Did God dare to place a roach on my sleeping pillow? In some sort of practical joke meant to break me. That would of course be the ONLY explanation.

But wait! It moved! I see gigantic hopping legs! Why it is only a cricket! Crickets are nice. Crickets are pets in China and consciences to puppet boys in cartoons! They are slow and gentle and do not spit on you like grasshoppers. Hurrah! By the way, I'm not sure why some insects are regarded as friendly and sweet while others are seen as horrors. Take the butterfly, for instance. People love those things, apparently because they have pretty wings. But have you ever really looked at the body of one? Crazy spiral tongues and legs EVERYWHERE. Ugh... I shudder to think of it...

Anyway, after my initial relief I was faced with a new problem. How was I going to get it out of my room? I toyed with the idea of just leaving it there, because I am definitely going to sleep on the couch anyway since my bed and pillows betrayed me like that. But I thought it might be beneficial for it to live outside where it can eat cricket food. I hatched a plan.

It seemed to me that if I could somehow trap it in a glass, and then put a plate or something over it, then I could just take it outside easily. But I realized that it was easier said than done. I didn't want to hurt its legs when I slid the plate under and I CERTAINLY didn't want it to escape when I lifted the cup slightly. And, once I started thinking about it, I didn't want it to leap up at me when I came at it.

I determined that a mere glass was too small of a weapon, so I went into the kitchen to get something larger. When I came back with the cooking pot and wearing big yellow rubber gloves that went pretty high up my arms, in case it tried escaping up my arm like that spider did, I would only have to have the mental scarring related to the image of it running toward my face, and not also the trauma of feeling its little horrible legs on my skin.

By the time I got back, it had crawled to the center of my pillow and was basically just watching me. I started to talk to it, explaining that I didn't want to hurt it and to please not jump at my face or move at all. Even though it was perfectly still and very small and a CRICKET, I could not bring myself to advance on it. I was petrified by some strange terror that doesn't make any actual sense to me.

After a few times of going back into the living room and giving myself pep talks, I came into the room and put this gigantic stew pot over it and picked up the entire pillow and took it to the living room and set it down and opened the door and tried to fling it outside. Naturally, the cricket had a frightened death grip on my pillow and I had a bunch of terror. I imagined it would jump back inside and skitter at frightful speeds and since the door was open, I imagined that a million other bugs would run in after it. So I said "oh PLEASE go outside and away from me." I think my voice actually shook with emotion.

Of course then it crawled onto the porch and I shut the door quickly. It was sort of anticlimactic and boring, the whole ordeal. Unless you were me.

My pillow is now next to the dirty laundry hamper, those yellow gloves will need to be sterilized somehow, and I am still full enough of adrenaline that I may not be able to sleep for a few more hours again. I kind of feel nauseated anyway. It's just their insecty legs... They are so horrible.