what's a god to a woodlouse
the father, the son & the holy bog
there i am, walking into my bathroom, about to brush my teeth or to stand right up close to the mirror and examine my face in excruciating magnification. i’ll glance down and spot it: a single woodlouse, slowly tottering its way along the same stretch of wall.
it’s always just one, scuttling out on some little mission only it understands. and i’ll do the same thing every time: say a very quiet “oh, you little fucker” before working myself up to have the nerve to get a bundle of toilet tissue (this bundle is more often than not too much for the task but i’m now in autopilot fight-or-flight mode and i don’t want to see or feel this woodlouse), gingerly wrap this woodlouse in a tissue and flush it down the toilet. sorry, mate, R.I. in watery P.
but as i stand motionless in the shower, wondering about wandering woodlice and warmed by the hot water i’m using at a rate i can just about afford, a wild thought enters my mind – i might be an unaware cog in the woodlouse sacred universe.
what if, unbeknownst to me, i’ve become the stuff of woodlouse myth?
just imagine: a woodlouse parish council gathers in some damp crevice, headed by the great and wise woodlouse prophet, the humble leaders of a small village of woodlice. the elder speaks in hushed tones, narrating the fate of woodlouse-kind who have ventured out along the heavenly bathroom path, never to return.
but they don’t know i’m out here, whackin’ and tossin’ them like a bathroom mafioso. no, no - it’s become lore that each louse has been specially chosen to walk the path to ascension.
their rituals are probably quite grand, considering they are such small creatures. each time a brave woodlouse steps forward for their fated journey, they are anointed with a droplet of moisture from the muggy cracks, blessed to venture on this pilgrimage.
the other woodlice gather in the village square, bowing their little antennae, whispering words of encouragement and prayers to send this miniature soldier into the unknown, fully convinced that this will grant them safe passage by a benevolent deity into woodlouse nirvana.
it’s all going according to plan…
and then i step in as…
the woodlouse ferryman.
instead of whisking them gently into the good night, i, armed with tissue and robust flush, carry them unceremoniously and erratically to their consecrated, watery ending. the hallowed hereafter. the toilet. i’ll never be able to communicate this to woodlouse-topia, so please let me be clear: it is the toilet. perhaps they think of me as a celestial busboy, unknowable and unseeable, delicately bringing their precious bug kin to the great beyond.
woodlouse families gather around their teeny hearths, passing down stories of the bathroom path and the grand flush, a dramatic retelling for young woodlice as they dream of finally being chosen to head out on their first - and last - magnific adventure.
so now, whenever i see a woodlouse on its voyage, i whisper to it: “glad flushings to you, noble warrior” before i, you know…
i cannot stress this enough… i’m chucking them into the toilet 👋🏾🧻🚽
