‘Most insects don’t live very long. Setting aside their low average life spans and their fragile bodies and the dangerous environments in which they go about their daily lives, bugs are just not very well liked. The world is out to get bugs, even though we’ve already begun to recognize an amount of detriment from their absence. One wouldn’t think a sort of retirement would be in the cards for denizens of the insect world.
One would be wrong, though. An insect is allowed to retire when it is found inside another creature’s home and escorted out, rather than killed. Upon exiting the home, the insect makes its way to ‘The Place Where Bugs Go When You Throw Them Outside’ and, there, would live out the rest of its life in peace if it weren’t for all the tourists ruining it, nowadays.’
I suppose I should be thankful that insects understand the irony of unwanted visitors in the closest thing they could collectively call home. The glimpses I get of ‘The Place Where Bugs Go When You Throw Them Outside’ suggest that it is something of a honeycombed habitat, surface-level and underground. Satellite images suggest wildflower fields and forested acres are embedded within. Leaked government images indicate there may also be corpse fields for the scavenger species and, worse, cultivated mammal herds for parasites. It’s all very environmentally friendly, though, and without human involvement, humane practices don’t really factor into the project at all.
I’m escorted off the property by a motley swarm of stinging insects. Chased, one might say, but it does feel like the insects and I are going through the motions. They catch and release, hoping we will carry the favor forward.
-traveler
