Subterranean Beefworks

Unwelcome guests

I added another link to the Visitworthy section on the right of this page. It's to my Audioscrobbler page, which I hope will expose me to some new music. An open source project, it tabulates whatever I play in winamp and creates an impressive little histrogram that enumerates my musical tastes. It's social too, so people who also want to use it can befriend me and we can, uhh, do stuff with our music or something.

I just got sidetracked by something truly horrid. In the winter, there's a problem in the Bethlehem area with the brown marmorated stink bug. Though basically harmless, Halyomorpha haly are about as likable as people who sleep in your car without permission. They don't fair so well in the winter months, so they find their way into the warmth of human dwellings, proceeding to laze around indefinitely, exploring lampshades and pelting their crispy exoskeletons against walls and ceilings. To all appearances, they come across like they just need a place to stay for the night, which is fine by me. They can hunker down in a corner for a day or two, if it will make things easier.

It takes about a day graced by their presence before their personality shines through. Before long, one notices that they flaunt their lack for anything to do. They make sure you see them gradually creep their way across a wall, only to pause once they hit a corner, then turn back or go in some other arbitrary direction. It is a premeditated, deliberate, and purposeful effort to piss me off. Of this I have no doubt.

I can tolerate them, for a little while. They're perfectly welcome to use my room as a jungle gym as long as they don't intend to overstay their welcome. Unfortunately, just like their annoying counterparts, the fish and the visitors, they stink after three days. It's only so many fly-bys and failed wall landings before I am compelled to say something.

The most humane solution I've found that still preserves my desire for some sort of retribution is to capture them in a container and put it in the freezer. They came into my room to escape the cold. That's fine. But they took advantage of my generosity and my patience by acting like inconsiderate dicks. For that reason, they get in abundance the very thing they wanted least: chilliness.

At first, I just put them in my freezer to stun them so I could just throw them back outside later. They are robust creatures, they can usually handle it. But as is often the case, I forget about them and they expire in cold, calm, darkness. They eventually get thrown out when I remember them, or if I need the container to catch another freeloader.

What sidetracked me was that I remembered one that I put in about a month ago. He was in a little yellow plastic egg that used to hold a bouncy ball, his legs all gnarled together in insectile rigor mortis. Taking him out, I was compelled to smell inside the egg, because, you know, he's a stink bug.

I very nearly threw up. Mother nature has chosen the most unique, undefinable odor for these creatures, such that when you catch wind of their foul oderiferous defenses, it's as though a hidden part of your brain awakens, a cluster of neurons whose sole purpose is to make you feel briefly miserable. It is a smell somewhere in the vicinity of rotten nuts mixed with sour milk that has just been drained from a deep necrotic wound, a primitively gross smell that conjures fundamental evolutionary repulsion.

I guess it serves me right. This sort of thing was never good for karma. But then again, the same could be said about making yourself a difficult guest. I won't mention any names.

Posted by Alchemae at March 15, 2005 09:01 PM