THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!

Two summers ago, a junebug got into my apartment. I don't know how this exoskeletoned behemoth got in - seriously, it was at least the size of a helicopter and it's not like I have huge gaping holes in my walls - but it found a way.
So yeah...one moment I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, and the next moment a junebug was zipping erratically back and forth through my living room like an airborne crackhead, casting a Mothra-sized shadow on the ceiling every time its flight path came near my table lamp.  I squealed in terror and hit the deck because I did not - under any circumstances - want to feel twelve pounds of chitin-wrapped bugmeat pelting full-force into the side of my face.  It was late and I had to work the next morning and I really didn't know what the hell to do* - there was no possible way I could ever get to sleep with that thing loose in the apartment.

Finally, the junebug's wonky trajectory took it into the bedroom, and I ran over and shut the door.  With the beast safely contained, I managed to doze fitfully on the couch until my cell phone alarm told me it was time to get up.

And then...I had to go into the bedroom to fetch some clean clothes.

I opened the door a crack.

I opened it two inches wider.

I flung the door all the way open and dropped into a defensive crouch, my mind hyperalert to any sign of danger, every muscle in my body poised for flight.

And...nothing happened.  The junebug didn't dive-bomb my head.  It didn't sneak out of the room and steal my wallet while I was searching for a matching pair of socks.  It had just...vanished.

You'd think that would be a happy ending to this story, but no.  Every now and then I'll be rooting around in one of my storage boxes or cleaning an out-of-the-way corner of the apartment, and I'll remember how I never actually found that junebug..  And I wonder if maybe it was really old, and crawled off someplace to die...someplace buried and obscure, like the nook I'm currently cleaning and/or ransacking.  And I wonder if its crunchy, leathery corpse is about to tumble onto my hand.

I still randomly freak myself out sometimes, thinking about this.  Did the junebug leave my apartment that night, or did it stay here and die?  And if it died, where the hell is it?

Maybe the cat found and ate it.  Yeah, let's go with that.


*I hadn't met The Boy yet, so there was nobody else there to rescue me.**

**And by "rescue" I mean "mock relentlessly and then maybe eventually kill the bug, provided it's not too much effort."

*****

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