I hadn’t heard of an “assassin bug” before I saw one on my wall.
Based on a search, it’s likely that the assassin bug that appeared one recent Tuesday morning is referred to as a “masked hunter” (Reduvius personatus) or a similar species. When it comes to the natural world, I’m often in the position of novice. I have read that assassin bugs are not uncommonly found in homes, especially this time of year in my part of the world, which suggests to me ignorance on my part. Maybe I have seen one before. Yet I don’t recall that; and I don’t know that a person hears the term “assassin” attached to a living thing and not recall an encounter with that thing.
Alas, when the assassin introduced itself in the late morning I felt like I was seeing a being I hadn’t encountered before. And I couldn’t miss it; I couldn’t not see this half-finger-long black bug planted on the far wall of my kitchen. It didn’t exactly blend in.
Most of my life my instinct when I encountered a bug in my living space was to stomp on it. Smother it. Put it in a finger vise. Eventually, my default posture evolved to that of an insect transporter: When possible, I would, as we say, “re-home” the critter to the backyard or some other outdoor space.1
A new instinct has emerged in recent times as I have begun to “see” bugs and, in fact, as I have had memorable encounters with a select number of them. Some of these encounters have occurred during nocturnal dreams while others have been in the course of waking life.2 The new instinct, to be oxymoronic, is neither to kill them nor to relocate them but to allow them to be. That is, after an initial impulse to rid myself of the sight of the assassin, I left the bug on the wall.3
Before images come to one’s mind about my living quarters, no, I’m not talking about a stance in which I allow bugs to invade my house and multiple as they will. I don’t live on the set of a Stephen King movie. Instinctually, I still similarly react to bugs in my house, often with some level of disgust and/or fear, and, to be sure, I don’t so much as like having a single gnat on my body.4 Yet, of course, insects do serve purposes. They are here to do more than just earn the moniker we give all of them — to “bug” is universally understood as word that means to annoy — and it seems a natural part of one’s increasing openness to the beauty of the world5 to learn a thing or two about those who give you reason to. Among the things some bugs do — and this is the case with my guest the assassin — some bugs eat other bugs. Ergo, if you allow certain bugs to live you have free pest control. For example, I am often struck by women who fear spiders who can’t stand the sight of a centipede despite the fact that centipedes eat spiders.6 Seriously, to kill some bugs is to promote population growth of other bugs.
Still, on sight, the assassin bug, even before you know its name (also not drawn out of a hat), naturally draws out the instinct to immediately rid yourself of its presence. With a bent-knife-shaped head, razor straight legs, and aggressive hindquarters — to say nothing of a solid color that, if found in a paint store, might be called “hell at night” — the assassin looks like a critter that could survive a nuclear winter. Not many people, I wouldn’t think, regard an assassin bug and think “time to cuddle.”
Upon walking into my kitchen mid-morning that Tuesday and seeing this “masked hunter” my reaction went something like this: It’s on my wall. I want it off my wall. I want it out of my home. I want it gone and I want it gone rightfuckingnow.
Call it growth. Call it laziness. But something in me also said, “let’s take a picture.”
As I said, I looked up the bug and found that the assassin kills cockroaches, bed bugs, and other creatures no one wants lurking about and so I let it be. I made no final decisions, mind you. I didn’t fill out paperwork with adopt-an-assassin. This wasn’t a new pet. I kept an eye on it. I just didn’t take action.
One thing that happens when I learn that there is good in what I had presumed was evil — when I discover that there is light behind what I consider to be darkness — is that my feeling on the little thing changed. As I checked on its whereabouts over the next couple of hours (assassin bugs walk deliberately; they aren’t shifty like the centipede; they don’t sling themselves about like a spider) I noticed my initial instincts of fear and disgust subsided. We might say that I saw something closer to the assassin’s point of view. Love might be too strong of word here but I don’t think it’s wildly wrong to say that some level of affinity entered into the mix.7
Since I had more to do with my day than hang with this killer on the loose I will admit that the assassin got away. What I mean is that it slipped out of my view. I looked for it but couldn’t find it and, more or less, I went on with my day. I had an early evening appointment. I left my house, I came home. Over the ensuing few hours I may have thought a time or two of my interface with the bug but otherwise I occupied my mind with other matters.
That is, until after the hockey game I watched on TV ended. Which wasn’t long after I had opened the windows to let some cool air in. While making my evening oatmeal before a late-night walk my new friend re-appeared more or less in the same spot as during its debut.
Something about this appearance registered differently to me. I re-looked up facts about the assassin and learned that, while they really don’t want anything to do with those of us who walk on two legs, they can, if touched, stepped on, or startled, bite. And their bite, apparently, hurts like a mother.
Add it up: I live in a small house, which means my bedroom isn’t far from really anything, much less the spot where the assassin sat. I was also struck by the fact of the second appearance in such close proximity to the first. In dreams, the psyche will often make the same point more than once or in more than one way. It’s like a tell: Don’t miss this, buddy. The psyche builds in repetition so we don’t not see what it wants us to see. The assassin’s unmistakable re-emergence felt something akin to this dream dynamic. Back from an undisclosed location, this appearance called on me to reassess the earlier decision. Maybe the encounter served its purpose then and now it was time for a reconsideration of this relationship. It’s one thing to not reject the darkness. It’s another to too closely identify with same.
This creature does serve a purpose — I’m grateful the world is home to masked hunters — but it’s also important to protect myself. And not just the observable me but the unseen parts, too.
That is, after I trapped the assassin with a Pyrex bowl and a hastily-attached lid I went into the backyard with the idea I would release the critter in the grass, away from the house, meaning close to my detached garage. Except as I got close to the garage I remembered the caterpillar that has been in diapause in my garage since the fall. Given that assassins like to consume soft and chewy larvae, me and my lidded Pyrex suddenly took off down the alley. Now in the dark and unable to see the assassin or any cracks in the Pyrex lid I suddenly imaged might be present, I walked as fast as I could past the row of garages and beyond until I landed on a strip of grass near a convenience store a half block away. There I released the bug. I lost sight of it. Then found it again. And wished it well.
To summarize (in self-congratulatory) terms:
I encountered darkness and didn’t flinch (too much).
I allowed death to be; I didn’t fight it or try to eliminate it.
When the circumstances changed (i.e., when unnecessary pain would be possible — pain with no upside either for me or the creature that would, without malice, inflict that pain), I changed.
Whereas I felt certain that ridding my space of this creature was the correct play, I also had to be mindful of my vulnerability (symbolized by my caterpillar friend) as I considered re-location options. A reasonable protective measure complete, I moved on.
Meanwhile, the meaning I glean from this encounter continues to pile up. Among the facts I picked up during multiple look-ups and the use of Bug ID, I read that the assassin bug is a predator, but it’s a subtle one — it doesn’t announce itself. It works quietly and alone. The masked hunter takes effective action that doesn’t need to be loud or showy. I like that. I like that a lot. The need for validation, well, that also bites.8
Such encounters prompt questions:
Am I hunting something? Maybe so.
Do I need to let that something out? Not sure. But there’s energy there.
It’s still soon after. I started writing these words the next day — a day I took off of work. With the capacity to do just about anything within my financial means and physical abilities during a free day my energy, after a bout of morning exercise, was squarely on the desire to write about this bug.
After writing the first draft, I read the words back to myself and, inevitably, I saw the effort’s roughness; its incompleteness. No way the words then (or even now after some rewriting) are perfectly coherent to anyone else and very likely the import of the moments themselves won’t translate to any would-be reader in any way close to the way that I wish. It’s like telling someone, “you gotta listen to this song!” The feelings that made you implore another person cannot possibly register the same with them as they do with you. We really never hear the same song.
Yet, even during a shitty first draft, as I wrote about the bug, everything in my head made sense — every detail funneled toward meaning.
I wrote until I became overwhelmed with the connections — a star burned out by its own heat. I will not lament this; there’s nothing I can do about it. But the response to this little creature crawling on my wall and sitting there for a spell … a couple of weeks later and I am still gobsmacked by my response.
Now that I have returned to these words I discover I am a different person. Not a radically different person but who cares if it’s not radical? I may or may not have made these words any more coherent to anyone else (and there is a limit to how much I will work on a short piece about short-lived encounter with a bug). Yet the act of sitting with these words — these thoughts, these feelings — is one thing that glues together parts of me that very often otherwise feel fragmented.
I imagine that statement — or this one — may seem hyperbolic based on an encounter with un ugly bug but in some sense the moment felt like a vessel for the chance to glimpse everything important to me all at once.9
But maybe you had to be there.
I am, after all, a lover not a fighter.
Recently, I included a stock photo of a beetle that was magnified many times in a department communication I’m publish. It’s hard to “see” a creature fully like that and not think less harshly about it than when it’s just crawling on our arm. We’re all just trying to survive in the bodies we were given.
Having said that about my new instinct, it may come as little surprise when I say I don’t date much.
I inadvertently carried a big beetle in on a return from a walk the other day and without thought, as soon as I felt it on my neck, I swiped it into my sink with as much force as I would spike a volleyball.
I often belie my surname.
And, for this reason alone, should have better luck with the ladies than does yours truly.
If that’s all I got out of this encounter … hey, that’s not nothing.
I know from more personal experience than can be catalogued here.
My star burst again.