The Stink Bug Wars have begun, and I have gained an ally.
I have never encountered a conflict about which I could not possibly care less but find myself enmeshed in anyway, except maybe for religious conversations with my parents. It's like if being a World War I soldier were an office job. A new skirmish or wave of dysentery or cloud of mustard gas arises and I just sort of sigh and glance at the time.
The other night I heard another stink bug sawing the air in my bedroom as it lumbered unseen from one place to another. (Stink Bug Stealth technology is just crap.) It subsided shortly thereafter so I didn't trouble myself about it. The uneasy peace could not last, however; on the following evening I walked into my bedroom (evidently this is the front) and noticed an oddly shaped shadow suspended from the ceiling above my window. Curious and a little apprehensive, I clambered on top of the mattress and slowly straightened to where I could observe the strange shadow without putting my face too close to it.
A stink bug hung motionless in a hammock of web as a little black spider cocooned it.
I experienced confusing emotions. Historically I fucking hate spiders. I blame it on the time when I was seven and happened to glance up at the ceiling to see one descending onto my face. Ten years on my own should have taught me to kill my own spiders, but instead taught me how to remain ambulatory enough leave the room while my entire body seizes into one giant charlie horse of terror except for my urge to vomit. Finally, fed up with my own cowardice (they are the size of a pimple, STOP SCREAMING), but still too cowardly to man up and kill them (if you miss they curl up and just FALL, probably in your hair or down your shirt), I learned to suppress the gag reflex and continue with my normal activities. You know, while keeping a wary eye glued to the spider and exuding as much nonchalance as a cartoon character with a gun held to its head from behind a curtain while the villain hisses "act natural." But still, you know, it's a sort of peace. Like the peace I had with the stink bugs. And yeah, I'd rather have the stink bugs than bed bugs or cockroaches or centipedes (THEIR LEGS ARE HAIR AND THEY ARE LEGION), but I don't really want the stink bugs.
So when I saw the itsy bitsy spider gamely marching around the stink bug like a smart car driving over a tank, shrouding the shield-shaped armor tightly in magical butt filament, I felt a rapid succession of tiny emotional jolts like the shutter button of a high speed camera: disgust for the spider, disgust for the stink bug, admiration for the spider, pity for the stink bug, and a grim satisfaction that there would no longer be this particular thing going bzzzzz in the night. All before interest dissolved back into apathy in exactly the way my powdered non-dairy creamer collapses into my morning coffee.
"Right on, spider," I said, and left them alone.
I didn't really pick sides. I elected noninterference. You know, like the protagonist in Camus' L'Hote.
And now I'm worried that I'll come back and find stink bug guerrillas encamped behind my bras and stacks of teddy bears.
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