The African Crotch Beetle

Relationships are built on distribution of power and duties. In my marriage, my wife doesn't like insects, which have always held a certain fascination for me. One of my duties is bug disposal. When insects enter our house (as they sometimes do in the Summer), they are unwelcome. I will often pick them up and put them outside or toss them into the toilet—depending on the type of intruder it is. My wife will either capture it in a pill bottle or with exceedingly hideous specimens (in her scale of discrimination), they are squashed into an unrecognizable mess by a shoe swung with extreme prejudice. Often, a pill bottle will be waiting for me to both identify and then dispose of the occupant inside. Recently I released a captured spider on the front lawn. I was "scolded" by my wife, for not taking it 11 miles away—as apparently a spider released on the front lawn will find its way back into the house in a matter of minutes...

So this leads me to my story of what happened the other evening. My wife had caught a "bug" and had it in a holding facility (i.e. a pill bottle) when I returned home. I identified it as a small beetle and I tossed it into the toilet and continued on with my life. Later, as we were putting our son to bed, my wife asked me what kind of bug had been in the now empty pill bottle. I told her that it was a beetle. She asked what kind of beetle. It was quite small and black and likely a weevil, but I told her it was an African Crotch Beetle. Now my wife is not dumb, but I have the gift of being able to (frequently) come up with the most outrageous answers and keep a straight face—so after momentarily looking horrified, she asked me, "Are you just making that up?" That was when I burst out laughing. I had in fact, amused myself—if not anyone else. By now my wife had finished helping our two-year-old son brush his teeth and it was time to go potty. I heard the toilet flush prematurely, as they had not gone yet. Then my wife said, "Ahhg! You left it in the toilet and didn't flush it." That was when I smiled and said, "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that an African Crotch Beetle lives in our toilet now..."