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Thursday, June 6, 2013

A Satirical Allegory: Politicians are like bugs..


I've learned a lot since being in Texas: Big really is BIG here. If you never thought you were prone to sweat, come here and you will be. Southern hospitality abounds. And the difference between politicians here and elsewhere is the drawl. And because this is a big state, politicians are prolific--as much as its sub-tropical topography is prolific with an array of bugs.

I recently discovered I have a propensity to being totally creeped out by bugs. Politicians are a lot like bugs. They are weird, (and creepy), hide in dark places, and you can't often tell the good ones from the bad.  Let me illustrate my point with a brief (true story) analogy:

The spider , its belly bigger than a half dollar, lost more than half its web thanks to me.
I was in my back yard (yes, in Texas) a couple nights ago when I suddenly walked right through a enormous spider web. Swishing it away and out of my hair and face, I turned around to see an appropriately enormous yellow spider with a huge round belly and white spots on it, furiously trying to repair the damage I just made to its bug collecting domicile.  It and its domain were gone the next morning. So, I assume either the neighborhood Hoot Owl had a midnight snack or it relocated to a more hospitable neighborhood.  I looked up the spider online only to learn that spiders--like politicians can be difficult to find. But I learned that spiders that make circular webs like the one I ran squarely into cause the most heart attacks due to the shock going headlong into encapsulating, gooey web fibers. You think? 


The bug fell to the prickly pear cactus below.
A fate most of us would wish for many politicians.
Fully recovered from the previous night's run-in with a mammoth-sized Texas bug, I was grooming a Star Jasmine today that was taking over a window. It was so aggressive I had to take the screen off to pull the plant from between it and the window. No sooner had I done that when I was looking squarely at another bug. The thing was hanging on the jasmine vine for dear life. We were in a stare-down. Thinking like a constituent, I looked around for something to get rid of it with. 
Next thing I know it is gone. So I carefully pulled the vine from its rooted position around the frame of the window, copiously searching for the big bug in the process. I didn't see it.  A second later, I discovered that it was sneakily hiding itself in plain view, covering nearly all of the back of my hand!

I could hear my neighbor's windows rattle with my scream. The bug fell to the prickly pear cactus below.

Like some politicians, I know these bugs exist; haven't a clue where they are this instant, or whether they are good or bad; and don't know anything more about them than I did before I encountered them...except that I am totally creeped out by some of them.