Earlier this morning I was trying to finish up a documentary I had started last night; it was a YouTube video I had saved and uploaded to my tablet. For some reason, the video would quit playing after ten or so minutes and I'd have to reset the table and start the video again. Not sure what's causing it, probably due to the fact that I've disabled several apps that warned me before I terminated them that it might cause problems.
What, me listen to a machine? My folks, teachers, coaches, various girlfriends and one ex-wife will attest that I'm not too good at listening to humans.
Anyway...I stepped outside on the porch earlier this morning to feed my clowder of cats and one of the wild kittens got close enough for me to grab it and see what its sex was. It was a female cat - seems like every one of them is female and I put it down. I came back inside and felt something on my arm, a flea! I pinched it between my fingers and it hopped away, unfazed by my attempt at crushing it to death. With my luck, it was a pregnant female and it wound up on my bed where it will have 10,000 offspring and I'll have all the blood sucked out of me later tonight.
I needed some things, so I made a quick trip to the nearby dollar store. I wasn't but a couple of blocks from the house when I heard a buzzing. "Oh no." I thought. "It sounds like I've blown a speaker." I turned down the volume on my radio, but the buzzing persisted. "Oh no." I then thought. "It might be my alternator going out." but the dashboard gauge didn't show anything out of the norm. Then something small and black and yellow flew right in front of my face, a wasp! I almost crashed, taking both hands off the wheel and waving away the stinging insect. Stopping at the church parking lot down the street, I jumped out, leaving the door open. I went around to the other side and opened that door and the fierce wind that's been blowing all day swept away Lord knows what-all, prob. bank deposit slips, credit card receipts, etc. If my identity gets stolen and bank account drained sometime over the next few days, I'll know where it started. I didn't see the wasp, so I figured it had been blown out the door with the papers. Good.
I got my stuff at the store, then headed home. I was just about to turn down my street when the damn wasp landed on my arm. This time the panic was even worse and I pulled over and jumped out. I saw it on the seat and grabbed an old golf towel I keep in my truck and swatted the wasp with it. Nope, didn't kill it, but I think it got angry. It flew around the cab for a minute, refusing to fly out, then landed on the rear window. I wrapped the small towel around my fingers and tried to crush it but I didn't and it fell into my reusable grocery bag. (I must really be getting weak in my old age, not being able to smash two small insects. In my defense, I was probably still tired from trying to crush the flea, not to mention the two adrenaline overloads I had recently experienced.) I took the sack outside, turned it upside down and shook the wasp out. I fully expected it to attack me, but it flew off where it was swept up in the breeze. I expect it's already in Dallas, what with how windy it was today.
Got home, thankful I wasn't stung, made a cup of tea and sat down at my computer. I was just taking a sip of tea when I saw something move along the bottom of my monitor. Narrowing my eyes (I had taken off my glasses), I leaned in to see what it was- I thought my monitor might be going out. Leaning in, I saw it was a big grasshopper...and about that time it launched itself at me, landing squarely between my eyebrows on the bridge of my nose. My tea went flying, I knocked the mouse off the desk and overturned my chair, all the while flailing my arms.
I'm not afraid of grasshoppers, not even as much as I am a flea and especially not as much as a wasp, but I hate the feeling of them on me; they have some sort of claws on their legs (which is probably how it got in, latching onto my pants when I got out of my vehicle earlier) but the worst thing is when they spit that "tobacco juice" on you, that horrible, nasty excretion they exude from their horrible looking, ugly mouths.
I've had enough bugs for the day, both electronic and insect.
