Dylan leaned against his broom and
wiped the sweat from his face.
This was hard work. He
really regretted knocking that baseball into the neighbor’s window now, but he
couldn’t undo it. His father had
given him the option of cleaning the furniture store over mowing the neighbor’s
lawn for a month. He now decided
neither option was easy even though this option would only take one day.
He
had already cleaned the upstairs showroom and office. Now he had to clean the huge showroom on the main
floor. As he scanned the room, it
looked like a sea of furniture as far as the eye could see. He would have to sweep around all that
furniture before he could call it a day.
Just
then a big, fat insect buzzed by his head and landed on the floor next to a
loveseat. For a moment, Dylan
stared at the bug. It must have
been some sort of beetle with blue and red streaks on a field of black. He had never seen a bug like it. His first instinct was to catch the bug
and put it in a jar. That would
make a cool show and tell for science class next week.
Dylan
had seen some mason jars in the upstairs office. He laid down his broom and quickly went upstairs to grab a
jar. The jars did not have any
lids so he grabbed a piece of paper and a rubber band for an improvised
lid. Then he went back to the
showroom to see if the bug was still there. It was.
Slowly,
he crept toward the bug. He
planned to grab it with his hand and quickly stuff it in the jar. As he made his way toward it, he
wondered if this was a pinching beetle.
Just as he was debating whether or not grabbing the beetle with his hand
was a good idea, the beetle flew up and nearly hit him between the eyes. Dylan shrieked as he dodged the
bug. Now it was personal.
Dylan
no longer cared if he kept the bug alive.
A squished bug in his jar would be just as good. He picked up his broom and started
chasing the bug around the room.
After nearly sending a lamp crashing to the floor, Dylan decided that
maybe his attack plan needed some work even though he thought that was the
ugliest lamp he had ever seen. It
reminded him of a walrus. He
started shooing the bug into a more open place. The beetle just would not cooperate. Finally it landed on an old upright
piano his father kept in the corner.
Tired of the chase, Dylan sat on the bench and began to plunk on the
keys.
Suddenly,
Dylan heard a commotion outside and ran out the front door to see a parade of
motorcycles coming around the block.
They proceeded down Main Street and just kept coming around the
corner. There must have been
hundreds of motorcycles. The smell
of exhaust nearly knocked Dylan down, but he didn’t care. He had never seen that many motorcycles
together at one time.
As
the last motorcycle disappeared from sight, Dylan turned and walked back into
the store. There on the floor next
to his broom sat his friend, the beetle.
Dylan decided the beetle had earned the right to live and left it
alone. After all that excitement,
he still had to sweep the big showroom and maybe the beetle could keep him
company. With that, he picked up
his broom and set to work.
