On my way to work I discovered that I was not commuting alone. I had a tiny passenger with me; one who I had noticed stowed himself away several days prior. It was stinkbug. The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, or as I like to call it, a Petebug.1 Truth be told, I have always had a strange affinity for these insects. Too goofy looking to be revolting, and with a lazy, drunken gait, it is hard to hate on the Petebug. That they are considered a pest and a nuisance is understandable, but I am neither squeamish nor a farmer, so I normally have no reason to concern myself with them. When I was younger, I discovered one on a bookshelf in my room. Deeming him stupid and harmless, I decided to let him live, and I named him Pete. We coexisted together for months; him eating whatever it is petebugs eat, I occasionally coming across him ambling around in the dumbest places. He was my favorite kind of pet- one I don’t have to do anything for, but that nevertheless persists. I don’t know what happened to Pete, but in homage to him, I still refer to stinkbugs as Petebugs. And Now You Know.
The Petebug was ambling along on top of my car’s dashboard console, and I was hesitant to disturb him. Mornings I often find myself feeling pensive, and it occurred to me that Petebugs have an interesting, unusual lot in life. Petebugs are invaders: they are an invasive species from China. Or maybe it’s Korea. In any case, they are not from ‘round these parts. This harmless, tiny thing constitutes a grave threat to the indigenous fauna and flora of New Jersey, at least until something figures out how to eat it. I get the predators’ reluctance; I wouldn’t want to eat a Petebug either. Consequently, because Petebugs have no niche in our environment and no consistent predators, they are just kind of here. They exist, and that is enough. Even their status as invader is itself passive. They did not collectively conceive some devious plan to devour the globe. They just kind of ended up here.
The first Petebugs were undoubtedly brought here by accident. I cannot fathom anyone introducing them here intentionally. The most likely scenario is one matronly insect laid a clutch of eggs inside some shipping container, and several days later that container ended up here. I don’t suppose it matters much how they got here, and it is that initial brood that interests me most. Imagine being born into a world, a world that is the only one you’ve ever known, and yet that world is fundamentally ill-suited to you. It feels intuitively wrong. Your instincts (I would suggest that all Petebugs possess instincts) are all slightly out of whack. You can find food, but it isn’t quite right. Your enemies are nebulous and ill-defined. You respond to stimulus, but it doesn’t constitute anything in particular. No wonder they amble around as if they don’t have a care in the world – they are so divorced from their natural habitat that they no longer effectively respond to the call of their own nature. But this first lot of transplants, they were more than just displaced; they were alone. They were born and found no one. Is there an analogous experience for us?
Someday we will go to another planet. It is inevitable, unless our species destroys itself, and I like to think we will go to Mars first. On that far-flung day, it may even be necessary to begin colonizing other planets. Mars is not well suited to colonization, so we will have to leave our solar system and venture forth among the stars to reach a planet that can sustain us. How exactly this will come about is conjectural. One possibility is that, to combat our limited life spans, we send colonists who must grow along the ride. A ship full of babies, headed to some impossibly distant planet orbiting another star. The infants, only gradually developing self-awareness along the way, arrive at their destination. They live their lives, likely having been “raised” by the ship, but never really knowing where they came from, where they truly belong. They would be just as ill-suited to their environment as the Petebugs are here. Even in a breathable atmosphere and temperate climate, it is nearly impossible to replicate all the comforts and complexities of our home. These first colonists, too, would be out of sync with the world around them without ever really knowing, intuitively, why. Deep down, they too would be displaced. Even if, by pure luck, a perfect planet had been found, one ideal for human habitation, they would still be aliens. Strangers in their own home. Looking out over their planet, they would see nothing of themselves. No people, no architecture, absolutely nothing that their bodies evolved alongside over millions of years. Purely Foreign and Other. This is the life of the Petebug, a creature on our Earth who is intuitively disaffected. Without ever knowing it, they are wrong for their world, and they wander listlessly amongst creatures and landscapes unrelated and unknowable.
So Petebugs are kind of a bummer. And here was one such sad creature, asking only that I not immediately crush him in disgust. I obliged, and my thoughts moved on to something else. As I continued my commute, I looked down and noticed the Petebug (I will call him James) James had ceased his little stroll at the top of my instrument panel. He faced me, and clumsily gestured his farthest-forward leg at me. Is this evidence of some agency? A thank you? I will never know; it was the last thing James did. It was clear that I just witnessed his last gasp, his final breath. James moved no more.
What a strange thing it is to witness death. Living is such a weird state of being and yet when it leaves, when the activity of life ceases, it is far stranger. The life of a creature ended, and though nothing about James really changed (at least not empirically), everything changed. He was dead. He died, most likely, from starvation – from being stuck in my car for the better part of a week. I had assumed that since he made his way in, he knew a way out. Of course, Petebugs are strangers, and the landscape of a car is no different to his tiny insect brain from anywhere else. No trigger existed to say “Hey, this place is weird, note the path I entered by”. James trapped himself and condemned himself to death. I did not help him. He lived in a world not meant for him, unable to identify with anything, and his final days were spent just as stupidly – trapping himself in a car, starving, only half-trying to escape. Even in dying there was no urgency in him. Whether it was exhaustion or resignation, I do not know why he did what he did. Maybe he just didn’t want to die alone. But I was there, and I witnessed his death.
What do you do with a body? What do you do when something with even limited agency brings itself into your life, only to leave itself there for you to deal with it? James had given me a moment of reflection, more than most of his species could ever hope to aspire to. I couldn’t just smash his body in a napkin and dump it out the window. I resolved to allow him to lie in state until I finally got to the office. Sad at the harsh, senseless existence thrust upon him, I thought the nicest place I could leave James was the place that most resembled his true home. I gingerly picked him up and brought him over the curb to a patch of trees and grass. I placed him there. In the impartiality of nature, his body will be consumed, if not by a creature, than by the Earth itself. It is the way of things, but that is small consolation sometimes.
Goodbye James, you were a stupid meandering idiot bug.