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The Bug Man meets the Toxic Avenger and only the beetles survive! By J. G. Fabiano. "Hey, you up there?" I was upstairs at the time, working at my computer, and when I looked out the window I saw my neighbor in the yard below waving his hands wildly around his head. When I looked closely I could see little black dots flying around him. He yelled that 'they' must have arrived overnight and they had already eaten most of our trees and half the garden we shared. I immediately knew it was time once again to summon up all my superhuman reserves of strength and determination and invoke my secret identity to go out and confront a new invasion of the Japanese beetle. It was time for the return of 'Bug Man.' My super-hero costume consisted of a long-sleeved white T-shirt with a picture of a large Japanese beetle on the front in a red circle with a bar through it, and an old pair of jeans I kept in the garage. Kept there because my wife wouldn't let me bring them into the house - mostly because they still reeked of insecticide from last year and she was afraid they would burn a hole in the floor. For headgear I had planned on wearing my indestructible 'Made in Maine' baseball cap but, unfortunately, all that was left was a sweat-stained rim with a distinct whiff of insecticide. I think 'Made in the USA' toxic chemicals had eaten away the rest of it. Instead, I grabbed my, 'think Independent' cap, confident in the knowledge that it would repel all known enemies of civilization. I also knew it was time to unveil my secret weapon, so to speak, as I went into the battle against the armored arthropods. In a corner of the garage was a wooden box the size of a soda crate. It took me a few minutes to break it open because it was nailed tightly shut and with good reason. Inside was the newest, deadliest and most technologically advanced form of beetle killing device yet devised by the mind of man in the endless war against the insect empire. This weapon consisted of a long stainless steel cylinder with heavy-duty black tubes at both ends. There were identical nozzles on the end of each tube so it didn't matter which end I hooked up to the black insecticide storage cylinder with the thick leather shoulder straps. Also in the crate was a variable gauge sprayer with a head that looked like it could generate enough velocity to blow off the top of a 10-story building. Ghostbusters, eat your heart out! Just strapping it on made me hyperventilate with excitement. Then I took it off again. Before I could do anything I had to head over to my local True Value Hardware Store to get the right insecticide. The only thing that worried me as I surveyed the various payloads was that they were all made in Japan, the ancestral home of the invader. I found myself wondering if they had already developed an antidote. As I went to the counter the gentleman at the checkout looked me over closely. He then pointed to a Japanese beetle sitting comfortably on my shoulder. Just as I thought, the little buggers were spying on me. The gentleman then told me I should probably buy a mask to cover my mouth and nose while I sprayed but I told him this was personal. I wanted them to see me laughing as they went through their death throes. He wished me luck and off I went; the battle was about to begin. When I got home I topped up the spray gun cylinder with the beetle juice. The label warned that I should dilute the solution to one part in twenty. The hell with that, I thought, I didn't want to injure them, I wanted them dead. I wanted my property littered with corpses. I filled the container to the top, full strength, then strapped on the lethal apparatus, opened the garage doors and strode purposefully out into the driveway.I think every beetle in the neighborhood stopped chomping to take a good look at me. Up and down the street my neighbors stopped whatever they were doing, hurried their children and pets indoors and shut their doors and windows. I walked over to my favorite sugar maple that was laden with the little hard shelled critters, aimed the nozzle toward the top of the tree and opened up. I then realized that it was important which nozzle was hooked up to which tube as a jet of white liquid shot up behind my back and covered me heat to toe in a fountain of toxic white slime. I staggered backwards, struggled out of the apparatus, grabbed the garden hose and frantically washed myself off, relieved that I had already fathered all the children I wanted. Up and down the street I heard the beetles chomping happily on and I think I heard a couple of my neighbors guffawing loudly behind closed doors. More determined than ever, I swapped over the nozzle attachments, strapped on my assault gear again and launched a second attack. This time I covered the tree, top to bottom with the foul, dripping white gunk. I figured that if I didn't poison them I might at least drown them. After the sugar maple I decided to rescue my spruce trees. But, I couldn't move. My first thought was that I had inhaled too much of the poison and had been paralyzed. Then I realized I had sprayed so much I had glued my feet to the ground. It took a couple of minutes but I worked my feet loose and set off in a new direction whiled the soles of my sneakers dissolved underneath me. At this point I knew it was a suicide attack and if I was going down I was going to take down as many of the little 'sons of beetles' as I could with me. I wandered around the garden spaying everything within reach, coating my entire property with a fine white spray so it soon looked like a movie set that had been turned into a winter wonderland by a fake Hollywood snowstorm. My trees all turned white and started to wilt before my eyes. My red geraniums turned ghostly white and started to shrivel. I sprayed my garden, my lawn, my walkway, and my deck. I even sprayed my mailbox in case the little varmints were using it as a bunker. When I ran out of spray I went back and got more, filling the cylinder again and again until every last drop was gone. Finally I was done and I took off the gear and returned it to the crate. As I packed everything away I saw that my hands were coated so thickly they looked like I was wearing white gloves. I wondered if the pins and needles I felt in my fingers were due to the constant pulling and releasing of the firing mechanism or because my nervous system was collapsing. My wife wouldn't let me in the house until I had removed everything and promised to bury it. It took me almost an hour of washing myself with the garden hose before she decided I was safe enough to be let in the house so I could use the shower. Feeling a little weak, either from my exertions or chemical poisoning, I decided to take a nap, figuring that if I woke up I could view the carnage later. The last thing I was before I drifted off was a Japanese beetle perched on my night table and I swear the little bugger was grinning at me. The End
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