What you see here is a standard conical pint glass, about six inches high and about three inches in diameter across the mouth. It is inverted over some as-yet unidentified insect which is STANDING THE FUCK UP and RAPPING ITS ANTENNAE against the side in a plea for me to set it free. I trapped it an hour ago, and it remains on the windowsill above my bed, reminding me of its presence with its arthropodontic knocking every few minutes.
I have seen all varieties of creepy crawling fuck-all in my life. I have smashed city sewer roaches with my shoes, and swatted rainforest mosquitoes off of my Squirrel. I have watched in horror as the matted detritus of a rat gurgled up from a newly Draino-ed shower. I have spent the better part of this very summer in dire need of a windshield wiper for my laptop monitor, in order to keep it clean of mosquito guts. But I have never before trapped a clumsy, drunken, alien, thing, really so heavy and graceless it was fucking bumping INTO THE GODDAMNED WALLS, beneath one of our few nice glasses.
I owe my Native an apology for that mouse he killed in my cast-iron skillet. Mainly because I’m going to leave this nasty-assed bug here to suffocate or starve, and be really nice to the Native when he comes home from work in a few days so that he’ll dispose of it for me. Then I’m going to clean the hell out that glass and replace its contents with a very large rum and coke.
It’s really loud, still, an hour later. There must be days’ worth of oxygen in there. I’m terrified, a little, that if I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up Gregor Samsish. And I don’t think insects lactate, which means the Squirrel is going to starve.
Update: how long does it take to asphyxiate a but like this, anyway? This would weigh on my conscience, except every time I look at it I want to kill it by more brutal means. And if I felt like cleaning up gallons of big guts, I still might.
Meantime, it persists.
If it’s not too late, (I hate Feedly) and Hideous Bug is still lingering (oi!!), you can slide a thin piece of cardboard or plastic (playing cards work beautifully and you can burn them afterward) under the glass, covering the opening. At that point you can tote it away to die somewhere less visible. Like out on the porch. Or the neighbor’s porch. Or Guam.
Somewhere Orin Incandenza is getting chills.
I hope this situation has resolved itself by now.