What the hell was that thing? He hadn’t noticed it when he sat down in the driver’s seat, but it must have been there. Insects generally didn’t land on vehicles that were in motion – not live ones, anyway. Then again, this one didn’t appear to have any wings. Perhaps it had been hiding under the hood and had chosen an inopportune moment to explore the windshield.
And was it even an insect? Whenever he was able to steal a glance at it he tried to count its legs to see whether it was a spider or not, but that was hard to do with the poor little creature flattened against the glass. He wasn’t even driving that fast, but 30 mph appeared to be enough to keep it immobile.
When he stopped at a light he half-expected the thing to get up and start walking around, but still it remained frozen in place. Perhaps it was in a state of shock. He briefly considered turning on his wiper to dislodge it, but realized that would most likely result in it being splattered all over his windscreen, a most undesirable result.
By the time the bug roused itself to movement, the traffic light turned green and the driver took off again. Now he could count three of its legs because they were pitifully flapping in the breeze. They seemed so fragile; he couldn’t imagine how they were going to hold up as he increased the speed to 35, then 40 mph.
It also seemed that it was losing its precious grip on the surface, not surprising considering it was down to having only three – or was it five? – appendages connected to it. He decided that the charitable thing to do would be to get out of his car at the next stop light and, with the aid of a piece of scrap paper or a note card, delicately remove the traumatized creature and place it out of harm’s way on the ground. Sure, it would be miles away from where it had started, but that was the risk anything took when it hitched a ride on a strange automobile.
Alas, before he could carry out this noble and benevolent scheme, the bug blew off all by itself – although probably not by its own choice. So much for his good deed for the day.
Interesting comment on the stages a modern dude has to go through before he can even begin to contemplate doing something decent. It's especially telling, how the operator of the automobile never appears to consider pulling over to the side of the road and stopping. Outside of emergency services personnel, most people who routinely say things like: "Man! I'm so busy, I can't even spare five minutes..." are either delusional or insane.