I Think I Understand How Those Cartoon People Walking Across Rocks in the Water Feel When the Rocks Walk Away Because They're Really Turtles

Last night I was draining The Pony’s rotini when I noticed something near my left elbow as I leaned on the kitchen sink. It just caught my eye, you know, how something not normally there will get your attention.

The sink is almond-colored, because when building the house, Hick somehow didn’t think I was serious when I said I wanted a stainless steel sink just like the one we put in my $17,000 house when we renovated the kitchen. The counter is burgundy. And on it, right beside the sink, mere centimeters from my left elbow, was a black olive.

Okay, it wasn’t a whole black olive, all oval and hollow and waiting to be put on the end of a child’s finger, or cut up to apply to a pizza. It was more of a sliver of black olive. “Hmm…” I thought. “When did I last eat black olives? I didn’t notice that one got away.” Let the record show that I usually buy my black olives already sliced, in a tiny can from Save A Lot, to put on super nachos. I had made super nachos on Saturday. So that was a long time for an olive sliver to sit on the counter beside the sink. Even in a household of Thevictorians. Besides, my black olives are sliced crossways, not longways. And this one was clearly long and oval, with pointy ends, not round with a hole in the middle.

As I was contemplating this rogue black olive sliver, and watching the boiling water drain from the yellow plastic colander, I sensed movement from the corner of my eye.

THAT OLIVE WAS WALKING ACROSS THE COUNTER!

Yeah. How is that possible? Let me tell you how that’s possible. It was a bug! A BUG. A black bug walking across my burgundy kitchen counter. I grabbed a Puffs With Lotion and snatched up that critter forthwith. And…it didn’t even have the decency to crunchy! I’m not sure what type of bug that was. I had barely recovered from it being an olive. It was not your typical roach. It was narrower. And not crunch. Maybe it was some kind of fancy flying roach or beetle. But now it was a dead squashed bug of indeterminate origin.

Let the record show that Thevictorian household does not have a history of insect infestation. Sure, we have wasps on the porch every summer, and ants that come in under the kitchen door once a year, and an occasional millipede in the basement, and an odd field mouse here and there. But we do not have roaches. Or olive-slice-looking bugs. Where it came from I don’t know. It’s not even like it had an encrusted-silverware smorgasbord on which to feast. The only items on the counter were a sharp knife which had been used to slice an onion the night before, and a fork that had speared a dill pickle out of a new jar.

I don’t know where our visitor came from.

But I’m pretty sure Hick had something to do with it.