Road Apples by Tim Sanders
June 24, 2013

Move That Insect Aside, Dear, I'm Home

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There have been many notable people born on June 24. One of my favorites, born on June 24, 1813, was Henry Ward Beecher, the famous 19th Century Congregationalist minister. I'll admit that I don't really know much about Henry W. Beecher, but he did inspire Oliver Wendell Holmes to write an excellent piece of chicken literature:


“The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher

Called the hen a most elegant creature.

The hen, pleased with that,

Laid an egg in his hat–

And thus did the hen reward Beecher.”


Actually, my favorite piece of chicken literature came from Mark Twain, who was born on November 30, 1835, but could well have been born on June 24 if he'd only put his mind to it. Twain covered eggs and chickens this way:


“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.”


I read both quotes when I was a kid. So, since childhood I've had the picture of a minister walking around with a dozen asteroids in his hat. Not constantly, mind you. Only when I'm eating eggs, or chicken. That's one of the reasons June 24 has always been important to me.

Another reason June 24 looms large in my consciousness is that my wife, Marilyn, was born on that day in 19–WHOA THERE, I don't dare mention the year due to fear of reprisal! She once told me that if I ever revealed her age in print, she'd wait until I was asleep some night, put duct tape over my mouth, and squeeze my nostrils together with a clothespin until I stopped breathing. She may have been kidding, but I'd hate to take any chances. That duct tape tastes terrible.

So, mostly, this column is a tribute to Marilyn and her many outstanding qualities, of which she has ... many. She is bright, beautiful, thoughtful, talented, has nursed me through many years of very serious health problems, and always remembers where the clothespins and the duct tape are kept. In fact, she has so many outstanding qualities that I guess I'll have to concentrate on just one that, uh ... stand out. It is one that has fascinated and perplexed me for years.

Marilyn likes bugs. Not like Dracula's Renfield, who ate bugs whenever he got the chance. She just cares for them, in a motherly sort of way. When I'm in another room and hear her saying things like “OH, HOW SWEET! HOW PRECIOUS!” I know she might be looking at a photo of somebody's newborn baby, or there might just be a praying mantis or a tiny spider crawling up the plate glass sliding door. Of course, she does not like all insects. If a wasp should ever enter our house, it would soon go to meet its maker at the hand of Marilyn, which would be holding her fly swatter. Or perhaps a brick. She hates wasps, and yellow jackets, and fire ants, and mosquitoes, and other things with stingers. She also bears a lot of animosity for what people in the South, particularly upper middle class (UMC) folks, like to call palmetto bugs, so as not to let on that they've actually seen a nasty COCKROACH in their non-nasty UMC kitchen. If Marilyn were to find either a nasty old cockroach or one of the more refined, better educated palmetto bugs in our house, she'd fetch the claw hammer, track it down, and break it into several tiny pieces. She really doesn't like all bugs, but she does admire several varieties.

When she finds a ladybug perched on a curtain, she always gently picks it up and carries it to the door, encouraging it to fly away and come back again when she has more time to chat. She likes lightning bugs and walking sticks and grasshoppers and cicadas and dragonflies, and the kinds that start out as creepers and then graduate into butterflies and moths fascinate her. And while most of those harmless types are simply an annoyance to me, Marilyn would gladly take all of them into the den and read a bedtime story to the whole class, if she thought it would do them any good. She even likes June bugs, those evil looking flying insects with lobster claws that love to fly into my head at night and then make that little helicopter racket they make when they try to disentangle themselves from my hair. She wouldn't think of stomping on one. After all, as a child she used to tie a string to a June bug's leg and let it fly around her head until it ran out of gas and landed on an unsuspecting relative. From what I've heard, this made her rather unpopular at family reunions. And wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets notwithstanding, she refuses to kill certain other insects with stingers, like honey bees and bumblebees.

Unlike Marilyn, I have a healthy attitude toward most insects, which is a “kill it before it kills me” attitude. When I was driving home from college, back during the Taft administration, I noticed an enormous flying insect with at least a two-foot wingspan and a stinger the size of a TV antenna in the car. I did not panic, but I did immediately pull my little Corvair into somebody's front yard, barely missing their mailbox, and start looking for a weapon. I didn't want to make it mad by swatting at it, I only wanted to kill it. I finally found an old spray can of Amway shoe polish which I'd purchased from a friend who wouldn't leave me alone until I bought something. I sprayed the creature until it was very still. The thing, whatever it was, died there on the dashboard, all bright and shiny like a wingtip shoe, and ready to go back to Hell where it came from.

If Marilyn had been along, he'd have been gently ejected from the car and encouraged to go find a new home. And neither one of us, by which I mean neither Marilyn nor I, would've ever gotten a bit of use out of that stupid can of Amway shoe polish.

For her birthday this year, I tried to find one of those realistic little remote controlled June bugs for Marilyn, but the stores were sold out. I did, however, find a DVD version of the Japanese classic Mantis vs. Mothra. I hope she likes it.