The full bag didn't want to come out of the can. Being full, it created a seal, a poor one, but a seal nonetheless that always dragged this chore out interminably. Once the new bag was in place I could take the old one with all of the old garbage and smells out.
The four cans sat there, waiting like some large mouthed monsters waiting for their food. The cans stank from being used for so long. It's as if those monsters had never brushed their teeth.
Once back inside I felt safe from the garbage monsters and their breath. I picked up my coffee, now no longer hot, but still pleasantly warm.
As I prepared to sit down something touched the back of my head. I knew there was nobody there. My wife was in the pantry. Still, I distinctly felt something like the back of my head.
My face reflexively skewed up as I turned to look over my shoulder. There was nothing there.
I touched my head where I had been touched. There was nothing in my hair.
I looked at my hand curiously, as if the answer to this mystery was going to somehow appear in ink on my palm. Nothing was written there.
Sitting down on the couch, I tried to push the event away, as if I had imagined it. Something moved to my right. I barely caught the motion out of the corner of my eye. Cautiously, I turned my head. I found myself looking into the round alien eyes of what had, apparently, touched my head.
It's greenish brown triangular head with large round lidless eyes stared back at me. A beautiful praying mantis, a female at that, had hitched a ride on me.
She stood there, inches from my face, staring at me, waving her telltale forearms at me as if to say she would rip my head off. She was a lovely shade of brown with a thick bright green stripe down with side of her after section.
Quickly and tenderly, I put my hitchhiker back out where she probably came from. Where she belonged.
Suddenly, I realized, the drudgery of taking out the trash had been supplanted by the wonder and awe of such a lovely creature.
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