This is part of the Absolute Write June blog chain.
This month's prompt:
BugsYep. Bugs. Simple and easy. Prose, poetry, play. Fiction, nonfiction. It's all good, all bugs.
Bugs. Creepy crawly bugs. Well, not really, they are crawly, and I don’t love them, as in pick them up and play with them. But I was never one to be freaked out by them. Little bitty bug, big human, swat or squish, as the case may be. Except spiders.
Spiders get trapped and set outside, or let live indoors
depending on the sort of spider that they are.
It’s bad luck to kill a spider, so out they went, and still do. I always hated the hard body, yucky, spiders
in the barn, they always made a web where you had to walk through them doing
the crazy dance—me doing the crazy dance, not the spiders, though I always thought
they were shaking in their webs dancing just to get me. I used a broom to go through the barn door—so,
we got along okay.
I grew up mostly in Wisconsin. You might not think of Wisconsin as a state
big on bugs—other than the mosquito (it’s the state bird!), but living in a
small town, at 6 years old, we would go to the A&W for a once in a while treat. I’d sit next to the window and watch the June
bugs hit the window and crawl along the sill—they always creeped me out a bit,
I mean, isn’t that what they make fly tape from? It’s the right color and the darned things
stick to you just as well. Get either
one in your hair and you’ll never get it out!
One July, after moving into a different house, we went back
to my parent’s farm to get a washing machine we had stored in the granary. Now, picture this, old fashioned stairs, the
narrowish open sort, no railing of any kind, just rough wooden steps going up through
a hole in the floor. We got the washer to
the top of the stairs and somehow I ended up on the bottom walking backwards
holding my end, the top. We got about
half way down and it shifted . . .
Apparently there was water inside, it has been sitting under
a leak in the roof. What I didn’t expect
was that it was also full of June bugs.
Yes, full of the big fat, fly tape colored, June bugs. And guess where they ended up?
You got it. All over
me, in my hair, down my shirt, at least I wasn’t wearing a bra or they’d of been
in there as well . . . Everywhere that a June bug shouldn't be even on a third
date, much less on a first one! I had
nowhere to go, stuck on those steps, drop the washer and it would end up on top
of me, so had to endure those bugs until I got to the bottom. The washer got dropped and I ran out of the
granary, pulling off my shirt and batting those bugs off me, trying to get them out
of my hair.
I ran across the barnyard and turned on the hose, and started
spraying myself with it. Those bugs
flowed off me in a wiggling sea of brown.
Relieved, I turned off the water, only then realizing that
all he farm hands were sitting on the cement stock tank taking a break. Glad I could entertain them, maybe I should
have made it an act . . . Scratch that.
June Bugs. Shudder. Fly tape would have been better, at least it
would have offered some coverage!
These days, I am mostly blind, and I can bat a June bug outa
the air at 2 ft (the length of my arm) by the sound alone, that’ll show you—you
creepy things!
Please visit the other posts for this months prompt:
Participants and posts:
Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
Diem_Allen - http://mindovermistakes.blogspot.com (link to post)
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com (link to post)
articshark - http://www.drslaten.com/blog (link to post)
Lady Cat - http://randomwriterlythoughts.blogspot.ca (link to post)
U2Girl - http://ancatdubh.org (link to post)
MsLaylaCakes - http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post)
SuzanneSeese - http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
robynmackenzie - http://iwanttobeawesomewhenigrowup.com/ (link to post)
Sunwords - http://susannedoering.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
Angyl78 - http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
susanielson - http://somesemblancethereof.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
HistorySleuth - http://historysleuth.blogspot.com (link to post)
SRHowen - http://srhowen1.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Lyra Jean - http://beyondtourism.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
milkweed - http://www.thistlequill.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
Diem_Allen - http://mindovermistakes.blogspot.com (link to post)
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com (link to post)
articshark - http://www.drslaten.com/blog (link to post)
Lady Cat - http://randomwriterlythoughts.blogspot.ca (link to post)
U2Girl - http://ancatdubh.org (link to post)
MsLaylaCakes - http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post)
SuzanneSeese - http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
robynmackenzie - http://iwanttobeawesomewhenigrowup.com/ (link to post)
Sunwords - http://susannedoering.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
Angyl78 - http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
susanielson - http://somesemblancethereof.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
HistorySleuth - http://historysleuth.blogspot.com (link to post)
SRHowen - http://srhowen1.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Lyra Jean - http://beyondtourism.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
milkweed - http://www.thistlequill.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
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