Stinkbug
Abigail Thomas
Word Count 651
Something flutters onto my shirt, or almost onto my shirt, and I brush it away, with what has become a familiar motion, what with all the bugs that have arrived in the house since the flap on the dog door fell off six months ago. The bug is on the floor. I put a glass over it, slide an envelope under it and under the glass and take a good look. It’s a stink bug, looking prehistoric, shaped a bit like a shield. I love stinkbugs. This is the first one I’ve seen this year. A stinkbug moves slowly and deliberately until it finds a spot where it wants to stop, and it does, for days at a time. Is it meditating? Contemplating its next move? Pretending it is invisible? Loafing? Hibernating? No idea.
I have googled stinkbugs many times, just to make sure that’s what I’ve got, and am always dismayed to find how many entries there are about how to kill them. I don’t want to kill a stinkbug. Mine (I do think of them as mine) have never bothered me, or released their stink, they are quiet companions here one day, somewhere else the next. I love how they take life in such an unhurried fashion. Maybe that’s because I see them in the fall, when life slows down for everything. I remember reading that sometimes dozens and dozens move into houses for winter, attracted by a smell one stinkbug emits, something called an aggregation pheromone. What’s the harm? They don’t bite, and they don’t stink unless you hurt them, or scare them.
Very carefully I lower the stinkbug bearing envelope onto the windowsill by my chair. I watch, but it isn’t budging. It reminds me of me. I rarely get up from my chair, and almost never leave the house. But I’m hungry, and there’s nothing lying around but my pound cake. I’ve got to eat something, and I’ve got to get out of the house. It will be dark soon, and I don’t drive in the dark. Sadie knows the minute I reach for my shoes that I’m leaving, and she shoots through the dog door and is waiting by the car before I’m even off the porch. I don’t know whether she loves the car, or if she’s afraid I’ll disappear forever. She rides shotgun. Sometimes I think she thinks she’s driving.
There is a line at the butcher, only four customers allowed in at a time, but I’m in luck. There is only one woman ahead of me, although suddenly a lot of others show up and the line behind me is growing. There is probably an algorithm for this. I remain unclear on what an algorithm actually is, I hear the word bandied about everywhere there are statistics. But it does seem to be a fact of life that there’s a lull, then an overload, then a lull. Aggregation pheromones. Do we have them?
My turn. I buy two Campanelli chickens, more buttermilk, two pounds of sweet butter, and a brownie. Do I need help getting the bags to my car? asks the boy behind the counter. I shake my head, say nope, I’ve got it thanks. Bag in one hand, cane in the other, I’m just about to get to the door when an older man opens it for me, and I thank him. I try to look sympathetically at the long line waiting outside, but it’s hard behind a mask. Sadie and I drive home. Opening the door, the thought of a hundred stinkbugs makes me uneasy. My sister had an infestation of ladybugs one winter. It was the size and shape of a football, hanging in a corner of one room.
I put the groceries on the counter and check the windowsill. My stinkbug hasn’t moved an inch. And there’s still only one of him. So far, so good.
Abigail has four children, twelve grandchildren, one great grandchild, two dogs, and a high school education. Her books include Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life; and What Comes Next and How to Like It. She lives in Woodstock, NY.