So I went out to my crusty garden a couple of hours ago to take some photos and plan a blog post about “After the Crustiness – Now What?” I doodled around here and there and poked under things and shook my head and moaned and groaned and complained and took 42 pix.
Then I came inside to gather up a load of laundry so I could get that started while I actually wrote the Decrustification post… and something on my shoulder m-o-v-e-d. AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGHGHGHGHGHG!!!
I think the neighbors heard me two blocks away. If they didn’t, they weren’t paying attention. It actually kind of worries me that no one called the police. I don’t believe I’ve ever yelled louder in my life.
I had glanced over my shoulder and there was an alien looking back. Worse yet, it was climbing up my shoulder blade, one little nasty alien-leg at a time hooking INTO MY SWEATER and the look in its horrid alien eyes made it very clear it had no intention of letting go.
Still screaming (or screaming again, I don’t know. If it’s that important to you, ask the neighbors. They may have recovered from the sonic blast by now), I tried hopping up and down and wiggling said shoulder. No go. My alien enemy just kept coming. Laundry flying everywhere, I started trying to struggle out of my sweater, but this was no easy task… not only is not easy to get out of a sweater while hopping up and down and screaming and running around the house, but HE was right where I would normally put one of my hands to take a sweater off – and I just knew if he touched my bare skin I would start to dissolve like I’d been burned with Alien Acid.
So. Back to the running, jumping, screaming, one-armed struggle out of the sweater – The Enemy had almost made it into MY HAIR (aaaaaaaaaaacccccckkkkkk! @!!#%#@) when I finally tugged said sweater OFF and threw it on the floor. Whew. What a relief. Human ingenuity conquers Horrid Attacking Alien Hordes once again. NOW can I faint?
No, I’ve got to examine the evidence. Marched into kitchen (strains of Hail the Conquering Heroine playing in my head) and grabbed tongs. Not the little bamboo tongs – too flimsy. Tossed back into drawer. Crawled into back of bottom cabinet where all the Lost and Unloved Kitchen Things end up and rustled around til I found the Big Ole Mondo Canning Tongs. Yeah! Now we’re cooking with gas (sorry, Grandpa used to say that all the time and it just slips out once in awhile).
Strode back in to confront vanquished Enemy (blech) Alien Beast. Big, Conquering Heroine strides. (I’m not exactly used to conquering much of anything – not even cobwebs – so this was a new feeling and I was going to enjoy it to the fullest). Gingerly picked up Grossly Polluted Sweater Which Probably Needs To Be Burned Now with Big Ole Mondo Canning Tongs, turned it over and found…
…a poor, sick looking, beaten and down-trodden looking Stickbug. A missing-several-legs Stickbug. A world-weary I-have-no-teeth-and-wouldn’t-have-bitten-you-anyhow Stickbug.
To add insult to injury (mine), my mom told me last week that green stickbuggies are natives and the browns are the big evil non-native invaders who have moved in and started beating up everyone in the schoolyard… and this was, you guessed it, a Green Stickbug. Like he didn’t have enough to deal with outside, Brown Stickbug Gangs on every side, taking away his lunch money money every day and CLEARLY not being too careful in the pulling-off-legs-while-they’re-at-it department, I had to come along and kidnap him, take him inside to a foreign country, and beat the snot out of him with my sweater. He looked like a Stickbug who has had quite enough, thank you, and is ready to give up.
Transferring him from my sweater to a bush without letting his feet touch me (see above, under “Nasty Little Alien…”), was a tad bit more challenging that I would ever have imagined it could be. It’s a good thing he was already missing most of his legs, otherwise he might be missing some legs. If you know what I mean. We eventually accomplished it, though, and he hung there panting, exhausted and terrified, clearly ready to give up the Stickbug Ghost, while I took a couple of pix.
With any luck, next time the Great Gardener will bring him back as a Doberman…
