What a relief! Apparently, death from holding the wrong end of a flame thrower, being ejected by a wildly-gyrating Ferris wheel gone berzerk, dehydrating due to blood-sucking zombies, or suffering fatal trampling by frenzied steroid-ingesting giant armadillos could all happen multiple times.
But drowning can only happen once in a lifetime. Whew! One less thing to worry about.
I’m no entomologist, but even if I were, this guy would freak me out. The name itself is the stuff of science fiction, as this book cover suggests. The devil’s coach-horse is a beetle one hopes does not really exist.
The troubling thing is that this thing really does exist; I collected this specimen just outside my office door.
I thought at first this was a large ant. After closer inspection, I realized for that to be true, it would have to be an ant on The Mother of All Steroids. It measured fully one inch long, with jaws that could disassemble a Tonka Toy model dump truck with a single chomp.
I gingerly tried to gather the specimen in an empty plastic jar that used to contain Folgers coffee crystals. Suddenly, my mini-monster raised its tail straight into the air, as if to strike like a scorpion. At its end gleamed two white menacing tips, looking as though they could launch some sort of secret weaponry. Its mouth opened up like a Vise-Grip pliers, ready to sink into its next meal: me.
Dropping the Folgers jar, I clawed for the wall behind me, like a child clinging to its mother’s skirt; this one-inch mystery monster had me cornered. Pulse throbbing, I grabbed the disassembled Folgers lid and jar and did what any red-blooded male would do: I prepared to tromp him, leaving nothing behind but beetle pudding, a set of giant mandibles, and a tail full of venom or puss or poisonous juice that he would have injected into a vein. I imagined my death to be slow and painful, the poison probably first paralyzing my vocal cords as a precautionary measure, so that I could not squeal for help.
Then the unexpected happened. The cold-blooded vermin dropped his tail, turned, and attempted to retreat. It was now or never, life or death. I sprang at him, Folgers lid and jar in hand, and, mercifully, in his confusion, he did not kill me. He was my prisoner.
I kept my captive overnight, wondering just what chemical or radiation exposure had created my monster beetle.
What on earth was this miniature monster all about??
The Google search began. Eventually, I found him out:
“The other popular name for this beetle is ‘cocktail’, because of its habit of raising its tail like a scorpion when it feels threatened. It cannot sting like a scorpion, but it does have another, rather bizarre defense mechanism. At the end of its abdomen are a pair of white glands which can emit a foul smell. It can also squirt a stinking brown fluid from its mouth and anus.
“The ‘devil’s coach-horse’ name came from Irish mythology where this particular beetle was considered a symbol of corruption. It was believed to have the power to kill on sight, and that it would eat sinners. When the beetle raised its tail, it was thought to be casting a curse. The foul smelling fluid emitted added to the effect.”
Mystery solved, but no more comforted, I nervously peered into his big, cold, expressionless bug-eyes. I wondered what that beetle-brain thought about the kind of creature that was staring back at him.
And still, I pondered how he yet planned to end my life.
An Apple
A Twig
Wrights Flexi Lace Hem Facing, and
Apartment Finder Magazine
I came upon these discarded items, in that order, during a single ten-minute walk. What could these items mean? The sleuth in me could not let go of the evidence.
Eventually, the order of events became obvious:
Eva sat on the grass in the park, the breeze softly moving her hair. Yesterday’s college graduation marked the beginning of her life of New Choices. She would get her own place now, finally, leaving the restrictions of dormitory life behind. She breathed in her newfound freedom. Yes, everything would become different. She would have a career and new friendships of her choosing.
“You look happy,” came a voice from just behind her. “I’ve been watching you from up the hill. Care to share a bit of my picnic?” He handed her the apple.
Two hours later, Eva took off down the hill, to the park’s exit. To her surprise, the apple was still in her hand. It had been two of the best hours she could remember—he, another lingering graduate from yesterday’s ceremony, was witty and a bit eccentric in a disarming sort of way. Laughter made his eyes shut tight, and she liked that. In the joy of the moment, she balanced on a brick wall, placing foot before foot, being careful to keep her balance.
Only later did she recall that during her balancing act, she had left the apple on top of the wall.
Not bowing quite low enough beneath a young tree, a twig grabbed at her hair and broke off. Eva plucked it from her hair, noticing round seeds attached to it. She took it as a good omen—her graduation, the delightful picnic in the park, the promise of a full life ahead. To celebrate all of this, she placed her small Twig of Hope into the utility cover beneath her feet.
I’m still not sure what Wrights Flexi Lace Hem Facing is used for, but she had a package of it in her purse, ready for a sewing project. Our friend, Eva, is handy with a needle and thread. Maybe she was going to decorate a pair of jeans or trim the edge of a handmade tablecloth. In any case, the package of Wrights Flexi Lace Hem Facing fell out of her purse, just as she reached into it and pulled out her wallet to buy a newspaper. She would enshrine the newspaper, which documented the headlines of the First Day of Her New Life, framing it on the wall of the new apartment she would rent.
She noticed the neighboring magazine stand that held Apartment Finder Magazine. Of course! She would pick up a free copy to find her new residence! She eagerly rifled through the apartment guide.
But wait. I wondered at the story of Eva that I had imagined. Why, if this series of events had transpired, had I found the apartment publication still there, left behind on the magazine stand, opened to the page showing the apartments she had envied? Perhaps I’ve gotten the story twisted. There’s no explanation that fits this scenario. Why would she leave the publication behind? My story of the series of items that were left behind, the apple, the twig, the Wrights Flexi Lace Hem Facing and the Apartment Finder Magazine must all be mistaken, though it all seemed so plausible!
But now, as I revise and replay the scenes with the cast of characters, the mystery suddenly becomes clear to me!
I’m staring at Eva reading the magazine, so caught up in her dreams that she does not hear the approaching steps behind her. Suddenly an abrupt and familiar chuckle catches her attention and she spins around, gazing directly into those eyes, now shut tight, closed in laughter. The young man apologizes for frightening her.
“I’m sorry,” he begins, “but I had to follow. The park got awfully quiet and lonely after you left. I had no choice; I just had to follow.”
I gradually lost their conversation through their laughter as they strolled away together.
From atop the magazine rack, Apartment Finder Magazine quietly flapped its pages in the breeze. The apartments could wait for another day; this was the first day of the rest of her life.
Disembarking my routine shuttle bus that takes me from work to my train, I noticed a much larger than usual congregation of travelers waiting on the platform. Ordinarily, only several handfuls of folks loiter there for its arrival. On this occasion, there were several hundred passengers waiting to embark.
Were there that many workers who had mistakenly set their watches to the wrong time zone? Was a train-riding celebrity about to arrive?
But there was another curious fact: the previous train, scheduled to depart nearly an hour ago, was still sitting, not moving, on the tracks exactly where my train was supposed to arrive.
Was this a spectacular train wreck in the making? The adrenaline assaulted my veins. Quick! Prepare the iPhone’s video function!
I joined the crowd on the platform, plying several folks for an intelligence report, and discovered that they, too, lacked solid reconnaissance. Interpretation of the scene was up to conjecture.
Suddenly I noticed a train official on a walkie-talkie. Surely he could advise me; I asked him what was going on. His response was less than gratifying.
“Train broke down,” he muttered, before yelling at some people to get behind the yellow warning line. I heard him radio the arriving train—my usual train—to slow down as it arrived, explaining, “There’s a bunch of people here.”
Like weathervanes when a storm approaches, the awaiting crowd all pointed their heads in the same direction, toward the unoccupied second train track. I surmised it was intended for the arriving train.
But how could this gang of passengers all crowd onto one arriving train, which surely already contained its full load of passengers? And what really was the story of that broken down train, a disowned hulk just sitting there, clogging up good track space?
The new train arrived, and we herded in like cattle. The only missing components were the mooing and the slop of livestock droppings.
Miraculously, I was able to wedge myself between the wall of the train and a vertical handhold pole. With my head cocked to one side, I managed to stand relatively comfortably, slowly rotating myself like a rotisserie to spread the neck pain equally.
On the floor at my feet, a bearded young man wearing homemade jewelry and a headscarf displayed video clips on his computer to an attentive young lady, eagerly displaying himself performing various yoga-inspired dance routines in shows he performs across the country—perhaps across the world—I never could quite understand the context. Understandably, this fellow had a difficult time manifesting modesty since he excelled in all manner of crafts, meditation, disdain for the material world (except, apparently, for computers) and a oneness with nature and ecology, all honed such that it would make a Renaissance Man blush in comparison.
Meanwhile, the packed train clickety-clacked onward, past my usual stops, passengers eager to disembark, understandably displaying a mere veneer of patience.
Then, a most curious event transpired. On the second stop before my own, the train halted, ready to disgorge the host of impatient and disgruntled crammed-in train riders. The doors would not open. What seemed minutes later, the conductor’s voice came over the intercom.
“We will not be opening the doors until the sheriff’s deputies tell us we are cleared to do so. Thank you for your patience.”
I rotated my rotisserie-like stance, wedged next to the vertical handhold. A mystery was afoot, involving sheriffs! Was there danger from outside the train? Terrorists? Bomb-sniffing dogs? Worse yet, was there looming disaster from within the train?
Several minutes dragged by, when suddenly, three sheriff deputies burst into our train car from the car behind ours. They had, apparently, made their way through the entire length of the train, finally reaching ours.
They didn’t need to go much further. Employing the assistance of another officer who happened to be traveling in my railcar, the four officers gave sharp instructions for two young men to stand up. They handcuffed them immediately, though the throngs in the aisle would have made their escape impossible. The train doors finally opened, letting us view the officers trundling the two ruffians past a police dog, and loading them into awaiting patrol cars.
It had all been a sting operation! The two unwitting young hooligans had been aboard the “broken down” train, which was a ploy to transfer all the passengers, including them, into the second train, thereby gaining time for the officers to board the second train and set up the arrests. Once inside, the officers methodically made their way through the train, before finally finding them within my car.
The look of astonishment passed from passenger to passenger as they realized they had been traveling all this time, enduring a fake train breakdown—with criminals in their midst!
For me, working in a parole office, it was all in a day’s work. Tallying up the previous arrests I witnessed earlier that day at the parole office, these were simply more of the same—arrests number five and six.
By the time the doors closed behind the sheriffs and criminals, I was one stop closer to home. I rotated myself within my standing-room-only rotisserie and let the clickety-clack tracks take me away.
