Apartments in Portland don't have screens because supposedly they don't have bugs but they do. I've killed spiders, millipedes, decided to let spiders live so they could kill the millipedes, and found spiders dying slow and painful deaths after millipedes ate their legs off.
Come visit?
Anyway none of this prepared me for finding a moth the size of a small bird flying around the apartment, blocking all light as it swooped past the ceiling lamp, landing on curtains and almost pulling them off the wall with its weight, humming as loudly as a quiet plane or fighter jet.
I knew I either needed to get brave enough to fight him, get brave enough to co-habitate with him, or get brave enough to change my name, burn everything I owned, and move to another country. I chose co-habitate.
Just a few days later my heart was only skipping about five beats when I saw him in corners, and I was already choosing what actress would play me in the movie about our friendship that overcame all odds. Tina Fey? Zooey Deschanel? Should I just play myself? The mothbird was not faring so well. He stopped flying and started slithering and jerking around the floor, creaking and wrapping his wings around himself like some sort of tiny elderly Dracula looking for tea.
Seeing him in pain should have brought me immense pleasure, and it did, but it's also a new sort of scary. The best news is that now that he's flightless its only a matter of time before the millipedes get to him and this is all just another horrible, horrible memory.
When I went to girls' camp I had to sleep in a tent with the leaders because I was so afraid of the moths in the cabin. I was 17.
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