Bugged

I only wanted to take a photo of the giraffe crossing sign that is in the flowerbed halfway down the yard. It was dark outside; the sun had recently set. I flipped on the light switches as I went out the door. There were two of them, one for the flood light and one for the back porch. The darkness in the back yard swallowed up the golden glow after fifteen feet. I walked across the green septic field in the dark, the lights behind me, and turned on the camera app on my iPhone. It might have been too dark to take a photo; the screen was practically black; but that giraffe crossing sign is reflective. I held out some hope that I could get a photo and kept walking. I stopped right at the edge of the garden. The black dirt was invisible. I felt like I would be stepping off the edge of the planet if I continued. I aimed the camera at the bright yellow sign. It barely showed on the camera screen. I snapped the photo anyway and turned toward the back door. Each blade of grass cast a long dark shadow that swallowed up the pasture. I stared into the black lawn, looking for shapes that might not be grass shadows. Puppies did come out here to do their business regularly. I didn’t want to step in anything smelly. All I succeeded in doing was straining my eyes. It was too dark to see anything beyond the golden glow created by the lights on the back of the house. I turned around and headed back to the door. At the edge of the patio, I picked up speed. Night deepened quickly, and I scurried in the back door, securely closing and locking it behind me; I turned both locks, listening for the clicks and jiggling the handle to make sure the French doors had closed tightly.

The lights inside the house were daylight bright, having been installed by Dad for Mom to use when she was painting. I went back to the brightly colored fabrics that draped every surface in the studio. It didn’t take long before I was lost in a world of cloth and threads, pins and needles, rotary cutters and scissors. The hum of the sewing machine, the swish of the rotary cutter, and the slide of the hot iron were all punctuated by an odd tapping sound on glass French doors. I knew a storm was expected. Maybe that was tiny hail falling from the sky. The quilt squares took shape quickly and I laid them out on the shiny wood floor and watched the entire top form, one twelve-inch square at a time. The tapping continued.

Jingling sounds added another dimension to the irregular tapping rhythm, with a soft patting accompaniment and footsteps. I stopped what I was doing, fabric in hand, and looked up. Two poodles and my father walked into the room from the stairway. Ah, time for them to go out. I looked back at my fabric squares, intending to rearrange them slightly, even though I knew those puppies would walk across them and scatter them on the slippery floor.

“Oh, NO!” My father exclaimed from the back door. My eyebrows went up. “You left the back lights on!” Decades of experiences with porch lights and bugs came flooding into my mind. I suddenly knew what that ticking sound was.

“NO!” In hopeful disbelief, I dropped the squares and went to the door. Dad opened it just enough for himself and the two poodles to exit, and a swarm of bugs bounced and flew into the family room. Tiny ones clicked as they sprang up into the air about eighteen inches and landed on the wood floor again. Others flew across the room, moths, beetles, and mystery bugs. I slipped my flip flops on and started stomping. These little things were hard as pecan shells. I doused all the lights inside, hoping they would go away. I didn’t stop to wonder where they would ‘go away.’ The door opened again and Dad came back in, two poodles rushing in between his feet. More critters came in with them. “Where is the bug spray?” I asked, panicking at the thought of sleeping with all these bugs.

“In the shop, on a shelf,” he said and I hurried to find it. So many choices! There were at least half a dozen different colored cans of bug killer. I did some speed reading. I grabbed the one for flying insects and raced to the door again. I started spraying. The crowd silenced by a third. The other two-thirds kept jumping. I used a dust mop to pile up the bodies of those that had expired and kept trying to stomp on the two dozen plus insects that had survived the bug spray. They were doing an imitation of miniature Mexican Jumping Beans on the floor. The flying moths, beetles and random winged creatures were lost to me. They were probably hiding in the sofa, preparing to eat the cushions! Bug spray must have been improved since I last used any. It had a nice scent. I was probably going to die; my body would convulse and my neurons would cease firing and I would collapse in an epileptic fit down there with the jumping bugs. Well, I would worry about that later. I was down to about a dozen leapers. The beetles were still flying into the window pane outside on the French doors; they sounded like sleet hitting the glass. There was a carpet of thumbnail sized black bodies piled up outside the door. That might be a feast for the birds in the morning, I thought, glad I hadn’t sprayed the bug killer on them.

An hour later, I didn’t hear clicking from the tiny bugs that had come into the family room. I left the pile of hard, little insect bodies where I swept them up in front of the door for collection in the morning and I collapsed into my sewing chair, perspiring. What a mess! How could I forget to turn off those outside lights? I don’t think I’ll forget again any time soon.

That pile of bugs, dead from slamming into the glass panes on the French doors, was not there when I went out the next morning. I guess the birds did eat them. A cold hard bug on a foggy spring morning must be a real treat.