Procrastination

is an ugly thing. And that's all I'm going to say about that!

So--I'm shampooing my hair in the shower, where I do my most profound thinking, by the way, and looking at the blue gum wall-stickon stuff I put over the tiny insect holes where caulk should have gone. Just days ago I waited as all the yet unidentified and much tinier than a pinhead bugs ran for their little lives back to the "main" entry into the wall, helped along by my soft blowing and a few nudges with fluffy cotton tips. All safely in, I plugged up the holes and they will have to march elsewhere now.

My connection with insects always seems strange to me. I don't know a lot about them, and I do not hesitate to kill a flea on dog or cat, or mosquito or tick on me. I do know that if I am not being attacked, I will do all I can to re-route a wasp, moth, ant, spider (ok, not technically an insect,) stickbug (carefully), even roach, plus a hundred others of colorful descriptions about which I know nothing. Every life is on a par with the other, and it always made sense that familiarity to me was not the gauge by which I measure something's wanting to exist. And yes, hitting them en masse with my car is extremely unsettling, but extricating automobiles from the world is a whole 'nuther subject.

Now working in the conditioner, I think about how long ago I came to know that my spirit animal is an anole, and it flashes through my mind that as many as I've seen and hung out with, I have rarely witnessed them actually eating insects, though of course they must. Then years later, a sunny, and I thought solitary, moment on a long prairie boardwalk and I felt eyes staring at me. Discarding, though not too quickly, the thought that I was crazy, I looked left to the railing to see a green anole quite fixated on me. Not afraid, looking and tilting his head one way, then the other. I stayed there for a couple of hours, and he never left; I chatted, not so sure about him. This scenario has happened much more than once, and I seem to attract them wherever I go, especially when alone.

As I rinse (but don't repeat) the inevitable thought came and I burst out laughing: Maybe I am a reincarnated bug and Mr. Anole was just sizing me up as food.