This morning Jon and I were drinking coffee on the couch by the Christmas tree. Remember the Christmas tree? Looks like this:
Right now, as I sit on the same couch in this living room, that corner looks like this:
The story can be summed up in three points:
- It gave me the heebie jeebies.
- We’ve never taken down a tree that fast.
- Ninja Bob is my hero.
But allow me to explain. I was making my coffee when I heard a rustling under the tree. Remember when I said Ninja Bob doesn’t really mess with the Christmas tree? Well, throw that out the window, because he was up on his hind legs batting at an ornament. I hollered at him to get down, and went along with making my coffee.
A couple of minutes later, my coffee in hand, I was sitting down with Jon, and there was Bob, still under the tree messing around. We noticed he was pawing at something on the floor, and Jon got up to investigate.
Under the tree among the dropped pine needles were little bugs. Cloudy yellow in color, about a half an inch long, entirely disgusting. As Jon looked, more dropped from the tree. Bob was pawing at them when they crawled across the floor.
They looked like preying mantises (if you want to see what we learned from Uncle Google, go ahead and click here. I don’t really recommend it. It still makes me shiver.) After another minute, Jon found the nest. It looked like a little bee hive, sort of, and there was a hole in the side. Out of the hole, little bugs were crawling and dropping to the floor.
DISGUSTING. DISGUSTING, I TELL YOU. That is all I will say about the bugs, and the feeling I still get when I think of them emerging into my living room.
Jon cut off the offending branch with pruners, and we both sprang into action, taking off ornaments, unwinding lights and getting that tree the hell out of our house. Ten minutes, guys. Disassembled, chucked out into the snow, and everything vacuumed in its wake, not a pine needle remaining (or anything else).
Just a nice, clean, blissfully empty corner.
Bob is rewarding himself for alerting us to the danger with a nice, long nap in the chair. I shudder to think how long it would have taken us to learn what was hatching if he hadn’t seen it first.
The moral of the story: pay attention to your cats, they can be smarter than you. And inspect your Christmas tree carefully. Because ew.
