Good News, Bad News

The Good News is that Mo got his stitches out this morning. Yay! In fact, he can go back to being an indoor/outdoor cat at Mike's place -- he's free! he's free! -- except that the Bad News is that he already has another lump. The Good News is that he's had a BB in him for years (don't ask). The Bad News is that the BB's on the other side. So instead of setting him free only to snatch him up again for another surgery, we're keeping him inside. Tomorrow will be the report from the chemo guy. Then we'll know what the next move is.

Did you read the comments on my last blog, the one entitled Pride? Please take a moment to go read them, but especially the one from Anonymous, who's gone to Pride events for thirty-two years.




Hellooooo? Jeeze. I didn't say read the blogs all the way back to June 2008!

Well, at first, Anonymous was talking about how he (yes? he?) loves to taunt "them." I thought he meant the gay people celebrating Pride. As I read on, I got more furious. "What does it take to discourage These People?" he asks. Ooh! I'm incensed!

Okay. The term tract should have tipped me off at the very beginning, but it didn't. I don't even remember when it finally hit me that Anonymous was agreeing with me. Oh. Oh, then everything was fine. The Good News is that the right-thinking man was on my side. The Bad News is that the guy was a narrow-minded, ignorant, bigoted puke-ball ... right up until he agreed with me.

Let's revisit that beautiful but entirely creepy grasshopper, okay? If you read those comments, you'd see that I'm in the minority by wanting the critter out of my space. Yeah. I want 'im on Facebook. Heh. Heh.

Well, the truth is that I lifted up that bucket the next day, and the creature was still there, still beautiful with its yellow-and-rust tapestry, still as creepy as all nightmares rolled into one, accented with an episode or two of The Twilight Zone as seen by a twelve-year-old. It didn't hop away immediately -- not away from me or towards me -- so I mashed it with the rim of the bucket. More than once. Yes. I split it in two and killed it.

Maybe two hours later, I was back out there, and I saw that, to my horror, the thing was about a foot apart. I mean, it was beside itself -- ten, twelve inches away.

The next morning, I couldn't find it at all, not the end piece, not the front piece. Hm. One friend told me that her grasshopper carcass lasted for over a year.

Well, the next day, I saw that another grasshopper was trying to hide on the Mandeville. Dang! The first experience was so awful -- feeling squeamish about it and killing it and listening to all you bug-lovers -- that I just didn't want to deal with it. But dammit! I want that Mandeville! I want it healthy and happy so I can plant it when I move. Well, I was on a mission, so I didn't have time to handle it then. I shook the plant but the bug didn't fall off, and I went on my way. Hours later, I returned. I found a stick and knocked the critter off the plant and into the base of the pot.

The Good News is that it wasn't a grasshopper after all! The Bad News is that it was -- I swear! -- HALF a grasshopper! No kidding. The front half of that first one had managed to crawl back to the plant and hang out in it until it had what we all hope was a peaceful death.

Can you imagine that? And now do you see why I'm terrified of them? They have too much power. I actually do believe in reincarnation, although I've never considered that we reincarnate as things other than humans. Surely that version is for Hindus, not lapsed Christians. We switch genders and races and circumstances, but not species. I mean, we don't, do we? We stick to the same species? Right? Because if we don't, and that bug comes back as a sort of Ironsides version of that grasshopper, and I'm back as a gorgeous but icky bug, he'll probably aim those wheels right at me. At the very least, he'll break my glasses.