The Assassin

Sometimes, when you're married to an ADDer, you have to stay up until 3:00 in the morning doing something ridiculous.

Last night, as we were getting ready for bed, Jen spotted something out of the corner of her eye that was moving quickly across the carpet. I sprang into action.

You see, Jen has an irrational fear of cockroaches, which I can't hold against her, because everyone has their phobias (mine is birds). But we haven't seen (or expected) a roach since we moved out of our New York City apartment a year ago.

Upon seeing the bug, Jen started screaming, "Get something! Get something!" I knew this meant “get something to cover it with” so I grabbed an empty glass and trapped the tiny invader underneath it. But I couldn't just leave it under the glass and go to bed. Jen had to know what it was or else she couldn't go to sleep. (As she put it, "How would you like it if a bird flew in here and I trapped it under a box and told you to go to sleep?")

So the analysis began…and so did the ADD hyperfocus. Is it a roach or does it just look like a roach? Because what would a roach be doing in the country? (Incidentally, we can't actually say roach; we have to say "one of them".)

Jen, of course, can't look at the invader. So I have to relay the details to her while she sits at her computer, searching Bug Guide and What's that Bug for a species that looks like a roach but isn't a roach. At one point, I put my laptop on the floor right next to our captive and compared it to a Google image search of roaches. Then, I took digital macro closeup photos of the invader and compared those to what I found online. (I would have posted one of the photos here, but Jen can't look at them.)

By 2:00, we were pretty confident that it wasn't a roach. Our online searches led us to a subclass of assassin bug that looked very much like our friend under the glass. It took an hour of intense questioning before Jen was fully convinced of its identity. "Are you sure it's not one of them? Would you bet money on it?"

By 3:00, we went to bed, but Jen had a hard time falling asleep. "Erin, when I close my eyes, all I see is them. Are you positive it's an assassin?"

I was positive it was an assassin. And I was actually grateful to have an assassin in my home.

 

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Comments

[Kim]

If you post a link to the pic, but not the pic itself, would that work? I am a pretty good bug-identifier (hyperfocus while at an entomology co-op job). My current hyperfocus is bikes...

[Erin]

Kim, that is too funny. While I appreciate the offer, I actually deleted all of the pictures over the weekend, out of fear that Jen would be scrolling through and get the shock of her life. I can stomach bikes more so than bugs.