Much Too Much

The cockroaches don’t scurry at the sight of an unexpected light.  They remain, undisturbed, clinging to the walls of the shower at 2am.  They may briefly move an antenna towards the source of the light, almost as if it were a shrug of the shoulders; but they do this only for an instant and only to pay it due notice.  The only way to get a cockroach moving is to seriously provoke it with an outstretched toe or the handle-side of a broom.  They are survivors and they know this.  They’ve been known to carry on, headless, for as long as a month, reveling in their fortune of not losing something more important.  The majority of the cockroaches, with heads still firmly attached, laugh at the decapitated chicken and the 15 chaotic seconds it’s determined to live on this earth before collapsing in the dust.  Soak it up, think the chickens.  Amateurs, think the cockroaches.  They are said to live in groups of thousands, tens of thousands even.  A strength in numbers to match their strength of body.  But these numbers are pitiful compared to those of another insect that briefly makes this small, lakeside town their home.

They are known locally as chayules.  Their name exists only in the plural because there is very little reason to refer to them individually.  The locals, who have seen wave after wave of them come and go with the years, acknowledge their presence by stating the simple yet obvious truth, “Tonight we eat chayules.”  Although I am unsure of where they hatch or how they come into existence, I posit they are spit out from the bowels of an angry lake and set forth to take vengeance on anyone who dares to look upon her shores.  They are merciless but make one concession by offering ample warning before making landfall.  They do this in the form immense, black clouds, visible miles off shore, which could easily be mistaken for a thunderhead that lost its wings and fell from the sky.  They taunt us with their slow yet persistent progress, moving ever closer.  Then, suddenly, they’re upon us.  They seem to be attracted to everything and nothing all at once.  They take over all unoccupied space.  They die away mid-air and coat every surface in an ash-colored snow.  Their weak bodies are no match for the slippery layer of sweat covering ones arms, legs, and face.  They collide, they stick, and they die.  In fact, they die everywhere.  Perhaps they die of exhaustion from the arduous journey.  Or maybe they sacrifice themselves, swayed by the promise of glorious privacy that they will know only in death.  It’s a fate they’ll all come to realize in little time.  Even the most enduring of their kind won’t make it past four days.

And so, for the three or four days that they gray the sky, they’re merely tolerated.  During the day it’s not uncommon to see someone going about their business with a handkerchief clutched firmly to their face to guard their eyes, nose, and mouth from invasion.  In the evening, the only defense against them is to keep the lights off.  Total darkness.  They hold raves underneath the lit streetlamps, swirling in hypnotic patterns and totally mesmerized by the flaming bulb.  In the morning, their tiny, indistinguishable bodies are swept into piles like so many bits of dust.  Clutching the broom and with a quick flick of the wrists they’re cast out the front door and into the gutters to be carried away by the coming rain; they sail down the slightly sloping streets of the town and into the lake from which they came.  It seems as though they’re swallowed by the murky waters only to be belched out again in the coming days or weeks.  But as I marvel at their sheer numbers and proclivity to reproduce, I can’t help but think, as one of seven billion helping to slowly consume this planet, amateurs.