Two Dead Bugs

A break from doom scrolling while fighting sickness resulted in a front porch observation. Further oddity ensues.

Sitting on the front porch, head in my hands, wallowing in the self pity of illness, (I recently tested positive for covid, on the mend though!) I noticed two dead bugs at my feet. One of the lady variety, the other green and most likely some form of alien. The sighting of the two of these now deceased life forms being the result of an annoyance I had regarding the amount of time I had been spending on my phone, as well as too much brain fog to read anything. So, finding the elusive space between doom scroll and being hooked on phonics, I decided to hold my head in my hands and stare into nothingness. And gazing into that nothingness yielded the somethingness of two bug carcasses.

How did these bugs die? Not sure. But they did and now I am looking at them.

I wonder… did any human eye see these bugs while they were living? Where did they loiter and buzz? The long grass on the side of the house? The backyard where I discovered a whole colony of lady bugs under some rocks last fall?

Why are they dead so close together? Different variety, sure, but did the little dudes have a context? Am I even allowed to ask that? Maybe they had been pals, seeking some form of adventure. Maybe they thought about trying venture into the structure of my house and mistook the window for an opening and then !POW! — bonk go their heads on the glass and away they fall to the ground and away they fall out of life.

What does the lady bug and the green waxwing fellow have in common? Would the song sparrow, who had been nesting on the porch up until a few weeks ago when her and her babies took flight, have gorged the two dead relics? Or does she only like live insects for meals?

What does a bug even say??? That question is probably not allowed, either.

“Buzz.”

It’s gotta be more than, “buzz” though, right??

But a buzz is a language in a way. Buzz to me is the opening line to the lines of a text or a phone call. Is their buzz the opening line to some sort of attentive communion as well?

Easy now.

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I let my hands trace back along the top of my head, running my hair through my fingers, pulling my hairs slightly and forcing my head up to look at the front yard and the street and the way this dead-end road is so lushly overgrown with lilac, witches briar, tree-bush-hybrid-creeping-things.

A helicopter brushes by making a noise that is kinda bug like, which is kinda cool but also kinda concerning. I wonder if it will crash. If it does, the people inside will not be passive dead bodies on a porch possibly never seen before this moment by another human eye. They will be brother or sister or son or daughter or mother or father. They will have memory and time and emotion woven into the story of their loss.

Back on the porch, the bugs are still dead. I looked back down and put my head back in my hands and I see them. They are also brother or sister or son or daughter or mother or father. They also hail from a lineage.

What in the world do we do with that?? The notion that all living things in our midst are some piece of a continuum of family and ancestry? Sometimes I think about my dogs mother. Does she miss him? What are the lady bug’s aunt and uncle up to? Cousins? Are they just buzzing about?

For awhile there, and still a bit now, we were advised to not place human characterization and emotion onto the natural world. They don’t think the same way we do or they’re not as developed in the realm of emotion.

Sure, maybe true. But Jeez-Us-Christ, talk about boring!

There is steadfast reason and then there is story. And oftentimes a story slips its slippery self around the metallic cube of reasons steadfastness and says “neat thing you got going, but I’m simply flowing too fast at the moment” and all of a sudden you’re left in the current of limitless curiosity. I don’t mean to start a war, God knows we do that enough, all I’m saying is lets have some fun with our imagination, right?! After all, someday we’ll be dead.

The bugs are still dead. Their brothers and their sisters are still swirling somewhere. And based on the lack of explosion noise or sirens, the helicopter and its passengers are doing just fine. And I — sick and the woe-is-me, sad-sack I become when that’s the case — still have my head in my hands.

I am not scrolling my phone. I am not reading. I am looking at two dead bugs.