I am not particularly afraid of bugs (with the exception of spiders larger than salad plates), and I am well aware of their astonishing survival skills. Killing one or two or five hundred of them doesn’t make a dent in their numbers.

So when one of them makes its way into my house, I take it outside rather than destroy it. It’s not entirely altruistic on my part. Spraying the creature with poison contaminates my air, too; and smashing it makes a real mess on my floor.

While I’m not really afraid of them, I’m also not interested in actually touching them. So I have invented an excellent bug-rescue kit, which I would like to pass along to you at no charge. Some assembly is required.

Equipment required:

• One clear plastic cup, no more than 5 inches high, and as wide at the opening as possible.

• One piece of very thin and very stiff cardboard, large enough to cover the opening of the plastic cup, but no larger than necessary. The back from a 5-by-8-inch tablet works well.

Assembly:

• Place equipment in a drawer handy to all household members.

Instructions for Use:

• Make sure that the intruder bug is on a flat, rigid surface, such as a window or wall. Caution: This will NOT work on draperies. The author knows this from personal experience.

• Sneak up on bug, and place opening of clear plastic cup over the bug, pressing firmly against the flat surface.

• Lift edge of cup very slightly, and slide cardboard between cup and flat surface. You might have to nudge the bug with the inside of the cup to get it to step onto the cardboard. This is where the thinness of the cardboard is important. That bug is going to try hard to get out of there, and if you have to lift the edge of the cup very far, it’s going to be crawling up your arm in a flash. And it’s already mad.

• Holding the cup firmly against the cardboard with one hand, lift the edge of the cardboard and slide other hand under the cardboard. Lift the whole apparatus from the flat surface. It’s probably pretty obvious by now that the rigidity of the cardboard is vital. I mean, if you tried this with a piece of floppy yellow tablet paper, there’s no way you could keep that little fellow in the cup.

• Carry the whole thing to the door. Now you know why I specified the cup had to be no more than 5 inches tall. See, you forgot to open the door before you got the little monster trapped. So if you can’t hold the cup and the cardboard together with just one hand, you’re standing in the middle of the room with one really angry bug with a 3-inch stinger on his butt, and no way to get him outside. You could stand there until your kids get home from school. Or you could try putting the thing down on the floor while you open the door, but plastic cups are pretty light, and bugs can easily lift several times their own weight. So just make sure the cup is short and the cardboard is small enough to be held together with one hand. You might want to practice ahead of time.

• Open the door. Take the whole thing outside, and pick out a new home for the bug. Now you will understand why I told you it had to be a CLEAR plastic cup. You’re getting ready to let the thing go, it’s mad at you, and if the cup is opaque, you wouldn’t know where it is. You would be holding in your hand the entomological equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – you don’t know where the bug is until you look, and the very act of looking will change where the bug is, because when you lift the cup, that sucker’s gonna MOVE! You might even begin to doubt yourself, and wonder if the bug is actually still back in the house, getting ready to slam the door, lock you out, and get on the phone to call its buddies and tell them you’re out there. Worse yet, it might be poised to jump out and fly at your nose. But if the cup is transparent, you can shake it over to one side, pull the cardboard away, and let it go.

• If the bug is, in fact, a spider larger than a salad plate, I recommend throwing the whole contraption at a bush, running back up on the porch and dancing from foot to foot and flapping your arms around until the fiend has slunk away, then retrieving the kit for future use.

• Yell, “Godspeed, bug!”

• Try to explain yourself to the neighbors.

Posted by Sharon under Laughter | 3 Comments »