No Harm, No Foul

Earlier today I noticed that there was a beetle in our bathtub. This doesn't really bother me overmuch, because we haven't used our bathtub since roughly 1988, when my little brother graduated to taking showers. Sure, there were those years we used it as an impromptu laundry hamper (because walking three steps and throwing the clothes down the steps into a random pile is just too much work for teenagers), but really, it's been out of commission for almost twenty years. (Jesus Christ, I'm old.) So I decided to let the beetle have his way with the bathtub. No harm, no foul, right? Right.

[side note: For a few weeks now, I've been yelling at Huck for walking around by my computer and crunching on what I assumed were random pieces of the basement. Yesterday, I was doing some laundry down here and noticed that two of these beetles were in close proximity to my feet. The next thing I knew, there was a crunching noise, and I noticed that Huck had followed me down and was munching away at the bugs. Good boy!]

So naturally, being who I am and remembering the crunching, I began to feel a little sorry for the beetle in the bathtub, because unless it wants to crawl back into the drain (which, face it, probably isn't that appealing), it will have to live out the rest of it's meager life in the bathtub. And it hadn't moved in a while. Then I started thinking, no food, no water... It's like dying in a desert made of porcelain veneer. So I collected a few drops of water in my palm and dropped them near the bug, thinking that if it was dead it couldn't hurt anything, and if it was alive it couldn't scramble up the sides of the tub to kill me or anything.

Unfortunately Linus noticed me screwing around in there and jumped in to investigate.



Don't worry too much. Linus lost all interest when the bug stopped moving, as usual. I figure if the bug wants to die quick, he'll just move in front of the cat, and if he wants to live out his days in the porcelain desert, that's OK too. Or tomorrow I'll rescue it and take it outside. You know, whatever.