Three Years

I don't kill bugs. Not on purpose anyway. In addition to understanding the role they play in our ecosystem, they only get about three weeks. Who am I to shorten that pocket-sized lifespan? I think about all the bug mamas waiting for their critter babies to come home, but they never will. They've been smashed. Flattened. Crushed beneath the feet of the white man. 
So I catch them and I take them outside, and then shimmy, flick, or fling them back into the open arms of Mother Nature. In the case of roaches, I run from those at olympic speeds and then call for reinforcements. 

Since being married, the reinforcement is Brett. Before him it was Dad. In the college years, it was whatever male human lived in the apartments next to mine. Roaches are the one bug I can't bring myself to handle. 
Like so many before Brett, buzzing insects are but an inconvenience to overcome with little effort. An easy victory. He can crush a minuscule exoskeleton without considering which experiences the bug hasn't gotten to yet. He is what you would call, a normal person. Overtime, Brett has wordlessly taken on the role of Head Critter Catcher, and he studies the bugs in their glass enclosures before he sets them back outside again. 

Our home is a no kill shelter for bugs, some of which we just leave where we find them because they're just doing their best being bugs. Spiders in high corners, tiny moths hugging the ceilings, those guys can stay if they stick to the perimeters. We even have a lizard that lives behind our oven. We tried to catch her once but she was too quick, so we just let her stay back there. She keeps the bug count down and in turn, we fire up the oven each night so she can bask in the warmth of it all. She really likes being warm. Claudette (the lizard) has outsmarted the others of her kind and developed this symbiotic relationship. She's a trailblazer. She's welcome anytime. 

Occasionally, Brett's sense of competition will overtake his compassion and he will shoot flies out of the air with rubber bands. He has an alarmingly high accuracy rate with the rubber bands. I'm forced to choose between pride and sadness as a blue ring of rubber, stamped "produce of Ecuador," somersaults through the living room, intersects with an unassuming creature of tiny proportions, and hitch kicks the poor thing in a direction no one could anticipate. The little inward curled legs as it lays on the floor... the guilt may or may not occur to Brett. 

What I'm getting at here are wasps. A huge family of them set up multiple camps on our front porch. As a big fan of the world's pollinators, I hate to see the number dwindle. As a concerned resident, they can't be loitering on the front porch, smoking cigarettes and making guests feel uneasy. We discovered the giant wasp nest while sitting on the swing enjoying the evening air. There is was, all brown and porous. Threatening us with it's contents. I did not make a case for the wasps and left Brett to decide what to do with them. (He is boss of Exterior Maintenance.) 
While Papa Union and brother Jeff offered wasp sprays and chemicals, Brett took on a new tactic. An "Enraged Mother Nature/ Global Warming" approach. He has spent the last month creating wind and rain on our front porch. He first knocked the nests down and then ran like hell. Each day since, as the wasps try to rebuild, he sprays them with the hose and then turns on a commercial grade workshop fan that blows the porch plants sideways. 

"Whacha doing out there?" I ask him when he tells me not to go out the front for a while.
"I think if I create bad living conditions, they'll decide it's not the best place for a nest."

I want to remind you that he is a normal person - spent the first twenty seven years of his life handling nuisances the way humans have throughout history. He's out there encouraging a bunch wasps to move somewhere else because he loves me. 

Today makes three years married and I'm so proud of that big guy. Can't believe he talks to me.