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Description
There is an insect committing suicide in my overhead lamp. I am typing this sentence while it buzzes and clatters against the glass, throwing itself again and again into the light, dropping down shuddering and discombobulated, staggering with tiny legs making thousands of tiny thunk thunk thunk noises and then righting itself, considering, leaping once again towards the heated bulb.
I can only see the insect's shadow, cast on the bowl of the lamp. It's a vague blob about the size of a jelly bean, pale grey through the opaque glass, and yet I can see when it moves each of its six legs, when it spreads its translucent wings. The legs, too, are longer than those of a fly. The movements it makes after falling back to the glass are curiously doglike- it shakes its rear sets of legs as if shaking off water. Perhaps it's disposing of the heat left in its tiny body, or perhaps it is having involuntary muscle spasms.
Do insects have muscles? Somehow they must, but I see them as mechanical creatures more than anything. Their segmented exoskeletons remind me of an automaton, all riveted joints and gears inside. When they die, they are as light as paper, they dry up and blow away. They must have guts of some sort, even rudimentary ones, brains, intestines, stomachs, some way for food to move through them. When a bug smashes into your windshield they leave wet streaks behind, and I know that a bee's stinger is connected to their organs and it rips them out when the stinger leaves their bodies.
The insect is too large to be a fly or a bee, the wrong shape to be a moth. What it will be pretty soon is dead. Right now it's silent, still. I can't stop watching it, not out of suspense or even sympathy, but because it demands attention, draws my eyes like gravity. It's not like staring at a car accident or some other terrible thing. I don't feel anything for the insect other than a sort of scientific interest in how long this process will take. And perhaps there is a streak of cruelty that I am forced to admit to. After all I don't particularly like the idea of an insect invading my room. If it were close to me I'd kill it myself. I don't like admitting that I am interested in watching something die. But I am still looking, my gaze is still drawn. Like a moth to a flame.

Description
There is an insect committing suicide in my overhead lamp. I am typing this sentence while it buzzes and clatters against the glass, throwing itself again and again into the light, dropping down shuddering and discombobulated, staggering with tiny legs making thousands of tiny thunk thunk thunk noises and then righting itself, considering, leaping once again towards the heated bulb.
I can only see the insect's shadow, cast on the bowl of the lamp. It's a vague blob about the size of a jelly bean, pale grey through the opaque glass, and yet I can see when it moves each of its six legs, when it spreads its translucent wings. The legs, too, are longer than those of a fly. The movements it makes after falling back to the glass are curiously doglike- it shakes its rear sets of legs as if shaking off water. Perhaps it's disposing of the heat left in its tiny body, or perhaps it is having involuntary muscle spasms.
Do insects have muscles? Somehow they must, but I see them as mechanical creatures more than anything. Their segmented exoskeletons remind me of an automaton, all riveted joints and gears inside. When they die, they are as light as paper, they dry up and blow away. They must have guts of some sort, even rudimentary ones, brains, intestines, stomachs, some way for food to move through them. When a bug smashes into your windshield they leave wet streaks behind, and I know that a bee's stinger is connected to their organs and it rips them out when the stinger leaves their bodies.
The insect is too large to be a fly or a bee, the wrong shape to be a moth. What it will be pretty soon is dead. Right now it's silent, still. I can't stop watching it, not out of suspense or even sympathy, but because it demands attention, draws my eyes like gravity. It's not like staring at a car accident or some other terrible thing. I don't feel anything for the insect other than a sort of scientific interest in how long this process will take. And perhaps there is a streak of cruelty that I am forced to admit to. After all I don't particularly like the idea of an insect invading my room. If it were close to me I'd kill it myself. I don't like admitting that I am interested in watching something die. But I am still looking, my gaze is still drawn. Like a moth to a flame.