The Three Plagues of Egypt

Title:  The Three Plagues of Egypt

Kairos/Audience:  I normally tell this story when discussing mission stories or bug infestations in general.  It's one of the few really unique stories I feel like I have to tell, and I love seeing others' reactions to...well, you'll have to read on to find out.

Original Story:

            My first apartment in the mission field seemed normal enough to start with.  A little run-down, maybe, but functional for the four of us.  We didn't mind that it was a bit old.  After all, we were gone for most of the day.

            Then one day Elder Heiner commented on a small pile of sawdust collecting on the floor of the bathroom. 

            "We should tell management about that," he said.

            We found out that the apartment ceiling had again become infested with termites and that the pile of sawdust was evidence of their handiwork.  Management sent people to spray them out of existence, but that only added to our predicament.  You see, as termites begin to die, they also lose the will to hang onto high, horizontal surfaces.  I had to brush termite wings off of my bed sheets at night and be very careful of what I let get into my lunch.  It wasn't just in one isolated part of the apartment.  They were all over the place.

            Then, out of nowhere, the ants came.  They were everywhere.  I left a bag of popcorn on my desk overnight only to find a frothing mess of entomological gluttony by morning.  Several hundred found a gigantic sucker tucked deep inside one of my suitcases and organized an assembly line between it and their colony.  If we didn't keep our cereal in the freezer, it was doomed to infiltration.  The first time my trainer found some in his cereal, he froze it and then ate it anyway.  I was gutsy too, but not that gutsy.

            The flies arrived last but not least.  Admittedly, we had been a bit...lax about taking out the garbage.  That said, the sheer number of flies that soon began swarming throughout the whole apartment was a harsher sentence than any minor act of negligence deserved.  One day Elder Davis got fed up and, bereft of a flyswatter, unsheathed a spare Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet.  I followed him around and tallied mortality statistics to the tune of about a hundred or so.

            Three plagues of insects:  termites, ants and flies.  One apartment, over the space of several months.  Time has passed, apartments have changed, and we no longer have to beware the skies or store our cereal in the freezer.  But I stand convinced that none of us that passed through those incidents ever forgot what transpired.

Second version:  Why Bug Genocide Is Justified

Kairos/Audience:  Trying (and failing) to consol the thousands of insects killed in a certain apartment during the war of '14.

            Hi, great to see you all tonight.

            I know how that sounds coming from me, but it's true.  I never had anything against you personally.  It just wasn't possible for all of us to live in such a small place.  You have to admit you could be a real pain sometimes.  It was either our peace of mind, or the destruction of your entire civilizations.    A toss up, really [meiosis], but hey, the choice had to be made.

            Look, termites, I know you were there first.  I know you clawed tooth and nail from the brink of annihilation after the first time the exterminators tried to wipe you out.  But come on!  Trickling sawdust on our bathroom floor?  You knew that was a capital offense!  Technically we should have sent up a subpoena and had a trial by jury, but there were far too many of you for that [possible/impossible].  And then you had to add to the indecency to not bother to sepulcher [anthimeria] your dead properly!

            And as for you, ants, you were the ones who invaded us!  Invaded us [anadiplosis], I know, to feed your starving colony.  You thought we had plenty to spare, but you were wrong.  $120 a month only gets you so many bags of Raisin Bran.  We'd have negotiated more with you, but we were too busy teaching Light [Mytonymy], so we thought that turning your society into so much ground alfalfa [metaphor] probably served a higher purpose.  Plus, we spent so much time learning Spanish that we'd let our Antish slide, communicating would have been inconvenient [asyndeton].  And, after all, it was your choice to enter the traps we laid out for you.  That one was on you.

            Of all of you, the flies have the best excuse.  We invited you into the apartment, but it wasn't on purpose.  We were just lazy at taking the garbage out.  The problem was that you invited too many guests who didn't realize they had overstayed their welcome.  One or two of your buzzing around was ok, but a hundred?  Seriously?  We were missionaries, not party-planners [definition]!

            Look, I know that our side of the story is a little shaky.  I know it didn't end well for you.  But hey, what done is done, right?  All's fair in love, missionary work, and insect extermination [maxims and proverbs].  What's a few thousand casualties between friends?