| The Journal of Provincial Thought |
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EARWIG!
Background
If they crawl into your ear they'll eat through your brain and emerge from the opposite ear and you'll be dead, after weeks of screaming with eyes rolled back in your head— this was the terror left roiling in the wake of a 1972 Night Gallery TV episode titled "The Caterpillar." (The “boring” episode—get it? On account of they BORE through y. . . right.) Quite a persistent terror it was, in fact one that has followed you at not-that-comfortable a distance through the decades since. “They” were ravenous little cerebravores called earwigs, and theirs was one bug-name you were never going to forget. It was destined to forever be the word erupting in your mind any time you felt the tickle of some meandering insect’s timid peek into your auditory cavern. And you’d recall the news dropped on the Night Gallery wretch who, miraculously surviving the hellish excavation in his skull and starting to look for plusses in the wormhole-ventilation of his noodle, learned that unfortunately his little chompie-chum was a female— “and females lay eggs.”
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEAAMMMMM!
Not to mention, you always smartly observed, it will have deposited a dark trail of gwop-fer-brains certain to breed some complimentary complementary compost-infection of the grey matter. (“Compcompcomp rot in the brain,” it’s labeled by top authorities.)
EEEWWWWWWWWWWW!
| Fast forward to reality. Making your way about the world in the light of day, by and by you achieved a shaky détente with the demons of earwig anxiety, adopting the conventional appreciation of the true-life earwig— insect order Dermaptera, common as dirt: a mundane little git that you’d rather would go be ugly somewhere else. Brownish to blackish, some species winged and some not, generally under an inch long and sporting pincers that look formidable but are no threat to your flesh, blood or I.Q., earwigs are mostly harmless, though in numbers they might make honorable mention in a valiant go at plant damage. They aren’t your favorite houseguests but you’ve had worse two-legged ones. They do feed on vegetation, living or dead, as well as insects—living or dead— omnivores, they’re called, eaters of everything. Meaning technically that they would chow down on an unattended cerebrum after all, right? (A website notes that “they normally do NOT crawl into people's ears.” Normally? What if you’re not having a normal night?) |  |
Earwigs ramble like bandits at night and hole up in cool, moist, shady places during the day— under wood or stones or flower pots, behind baseboards, in flower beds, etc. Should their numbers make them a nuisance, they can be controlled in various ways, the oddest-sounding being the deployment of miniscule commando worms that infiltrate earwig nymphs and infect them with a payload of killer bacteria. With plausible deniability. Deniable plausibility. Happy union of science and interspecies politics implemented with extreme prejudice by dark operatives.
FURTHER SOURCES: If you would like more information on earwigs, by all means look them up. There’s more known every day. What you’ve read here is probably already wrong.
...the above's connection with REAL
Vast gathering armies of earwigs were the last things on Bob Bostic’s mind as he swung his Yard Pro riding mower around his sprawling hilltop yard in southern
UNTIL the mower deck caught and tore the piece of corrugated plastic drain pipe that was protecting the base of a maple tree against Weedeater cuts. Bob idled down and dismounted. The pipe had enclosed the trunk when the tree was small, but now reached only two-thirds around. Seizing the segment by its separated edge, Bob gave a heave and ripped it off the maple.
A seething mass of earwigs, hundreds if not thousands, scrambled and scurried, fanning out, every bug for itself, before his shocked, amazed, almost disbelieving eyes. Bob, a man of steel who has seen most things there are to see about country living, and most of those more than once, had never brushed up against one like this. For a long while he stared at the thinning colony of invaders, until an alarm sounded in his mind. My tree! My yard! He had noticed no damage before, nor did closer inspection now reveal any, but all the same his world had abruptly changed.
He looked about the premises, upon which stood trees of many sizes and species, all armored with black corrugated drain pipe. He approached a white ash and, bending, peeled back the plastic. . . and there they were, by the hundreds if not thousands!
As to what happened next, Bob expresses a bit of concern that “there may be PETA earwig lovers out there. (If they want pets, tell ’em to look around trees.)” In short, he “went to the barn and mixed some spray, and it did a job.” Inside the pipe around every tree— apple, peach, pear, maple, white ash, cherry, sycamore, plum, and whatall else— pulsed an army of earwigs, seemingly up from the inner earth and awaiting the devil’s marching orders. It’s doubtful he’ll send the next wave to Bob’s place.
In no instance did Bob note any obvious injury to trees, not even to the bark where they congregated, although “they had laid eggs.” And there have been no reports of brain borings in people, pets or farm animals. Just plain lucky?
So, then, that’s Real America! Earwigs. (Ching!)
THE MINK AND THE CLOROX BOTTLE:
Homeland security begins at home
A half-day’s walk down the road from Bob’s earwig acreage dwells a devout and respected woman named Virginia whose warmth suggests nothing of a ferocious day when she wielded the long, angry arm of vigilante justice.
It was a place and time wherein your chickens rated among the top seven or eight elements of your family’s survival. An assault upon your chickens was an assault on your children, an assault on daily breakfast and Sunday dinner.
However, minks enjoy chicken too, and consider it nothing to you if they flag down a perky pullet for a bit of pardon-me. They can be bold operators, often striking in broad daylight, confident in their elusiveness and intellectual superiority and ability to think out-of-the-box. (Science studies have proven all this mink confidence over and over again.)
The shriek and commotion barely reached her ears. From her vantage halfway up the mountain she could make out tiny forms in conflagration across the way, and knew instantly this was her fight. Not a second to lose, instinctively grabbing up the first projectile at hand, she lit out, skimming across the pasture as though borne on wings.
The mink, for all its intellectual superiority, had not followed the first law of natural predation, which states in translation from animal language, “Single out the weak and gimpy.” This hen was fully grown— as large as her assailant— at her physical peak, with buns of steel from running up and down the mountain all the time, unlike all those shiftless chickens content to wade about the barnyard in their own mud. She was making an event of it, giving the mink such fits that it neither saw nor heard Virginia bearing down until she was virtually atop it.
Jumping half out of its skin, the critter punched elusiveness-mode-with-afterburners and streaked over the hill towards the bottom—
A squeal of celebration was halfway up the furry villain’s throat when the heavy glass bomb clocked it squarely on the head and sent it rolling, stone dead. That’s right, PETA, stone dead. As a doorknob. Perimeter secured. Breakfast safe. Sunday dinner on. The hen, roughed up but unharmed, scuttled off to its scratching and clucking.
Thus securing a crucial element of their survival,
But you probably oughtn’t mess with her tomatoes.
That’s Real America! The Mink and the Clorox Bottle. (Ching!)
BULL-PARTS GOLF PUTTER
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What we have here then is a golf putter made out of a bull’s penis. That’s right, PETA, apparently the bull no longer needed it. (Please bear in mind that we are simply documenting these Real America! stories, having been made aware of them. Unless noted otherwise, we do not endorse, advocate, etc. How, looking at this novelty, COULD we?) In case you’re wondering what you’ll need for to make your own bull-penis putter: *the head is some bone, presumably from a bull’s leg No telling how “serviceable” this putter might be. |
That’s Real America! Bull-parts golf putter. (Ching!)
| jptArchive Issue 6 |
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