PittsburghThoughts

Life and death within a patio brick,  

Man, I just saw the weirdest thing. One of those bright, metallic green bugs was parked on my patio in the sun. If you've never seen one they look like they had a $20,000 custom paint job from the Pimp My Bug show. 

I happened to be walking by, and so did an ant. The $20,000, Pimp My Bug bug grabbed the ant and immediately began to fuck it up. It wasn't a piss ant, it was one of those half-way between a piss ant and a carpenter ant, ant, a midsized sedan ant.

I ran in the house to get a jar. Instinctively I knew that this behavior needed to be studied further and in a controlled environment. You seldom see anything praying on ants except on National Geographic and that cool Anteater cartoon that used to run between episodes of the Pink Panther cartoon. He (the Anteater) kind-of talked like Jackie Mason, blurting out the beginning of whatever he said in a rapid, staccato and then putting a huge emphasis at the end of every sentence. You-know-what-I-MEAN? Very Jewish and very funny, he once said, "If-Jesus-comes-back, we'll-kill-him-again!"

Approaching the mean, green bug for the second time, with jar in hand, he must have caught wind of me and flew off. I wondered if maybe I imagined him grabbing the ant and fucking it up. I looked real close and sure enough, there it was, a freshly mangled ant carcass. I was overjoyed. I had witnessed something rare, something sublime and I had a new appreciation for the Pimp My Bug bug. I've seen them before but never imagined they were anything other than an expression of nature's beauty and not blood thirsty predators waiting to lurch at whatever crossed their path and would fit between their nasty, hairy mandibles.

I once fed a fly to a praying Mantis and seeding spider webs with various small bugs was an integral part of my childhood. Who can forget the white-headed fly screaming, "Help me, help me," in that shrill, miniaturized, human/fly voice? Bugs have always been there for us, I think it's time we gave them a big, gracious thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Metallic Green Bug wherever you are.    Gene