TL;DR

I hit F5 once more and wait a few moments while the screen repopulates, looking through the columns for the third time this morning. Nothing’s changed, of course, but once in a long while you hit that perfect point when you’re in sync with a guy in shipping/receiving somewhere when he’s scanning in that thing you so desperately want.

Package Progress

Location Date Local Time Description

LACHINE,QC, CA 02/12/2008 16:00 IMPORT SCAN

They said it wouldn’t be there until the 4^th but there’s always that hope that some driver has nothing to do that day and decides to rush something out to the airport, one step closer to being in my hot little hands.

Some people drink, smoke, cheat, gamble, skydive or fight. I get mail. It sounds weird, yeah, but in the end all vice is created equal, isn’t it? It’s all just the adrenaline rush of anticipation leaving you with a thought in the back of your mind all day and when the act is done the reward centers lighting up, giving you a celebratory shot of endorphins. In this case I’m looking at the delivery schedule for a pair of boots, winter’s coming and the snow apparently gets pretty deep here so a good pair of boots seems like a good idea.

As with any longstanding vice, though, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Letters (so long as they’re not bills), postcards, magazines, greeting cards. There are different grades, I suppose. Straight up correspondence like the kinds of letter people sent before e-mail are great, the amount of thought and effort that goes into a hand-written letter is huge when you compare it to the two seconds it would take to text or e-mail or IM or Twitter a person. Those two hours plus some fifty cents postage and a week-plus delivery time make for pure perfection. A friend sent me a postcard from Belize that had me flying high for a solid week. Getting people to write letters is hard, especially when you don’t like sending mail nearly as much as receiving it, but check it out. If you write your MP, even an e-mail, they have to respond to you by law. They’ll print your e-mail and if it’s an issue they get a lot of mail about they’ll form-letter you, but if it’s something they’re not used to hearing about somebody will write you a letter. They’ll say some nice things about you and thank you for the support. Sure in the back of your mind you know they’re only really doing it because it’s the law, but if there hasn’t been anything in awhile it’s an option.

It’s almost 12:30, so I make some instant oatmeal and eat it in attempt to kill a few minutes before walking to the post office. Unlike UPS Tracking, mail itself only really comes once a day so showing up more than once just makes me feel kind of sad, like the world can see my problem. That’s the other part, I think, a little bit of shame and guilt once in awhile when you wake up and think about the things you do for that little hit. I slip on a jacket go outside, trying to navigate the icy stairs by maintaining a death grip on the rail on the way down. It’s just a couple blocks down the street, I check my pockets to make sure that the package slip is where I put it the night before and shuffle down the sidewalk to my goal. The slip came yesterday because they always try to deliver to your door first but most delivery people won’t even ring the doorbell anymore, it’s easier for them to sign a slip and make you drag yourself down the street or halfway across the city to get whatever’s waiting for you.

I get there and walk up to the counter. The woman working the counter smiles cordially and asks for my ID, there’s some patter about me getting a lot of mail but I chalk it up to having a birthday and Christmas really close together. Finally the package is in mine and I’m free. This one’s pretty weird looking, sort of a long hard-cased envelope with a vague company name and some shipping waybills taped to it. Not as weird as my roommate’s prescription glasses from Pakistan, which resemble my platonic ideal of a package containing a shipment of high-grade opium. Cloth wrapped, wax sealed, stamped with huge customs stamps; the kind of package you would expect from a country where mail is still serious business.

I rush home with the prize, clutching it close as I pace briskly home, each step one closer to being able to open the package. I take the stairs two at a time in some vain effort to climb them faster, fumble with the keys to the door, rush in, and sit down. There’s a butter knife on the table from toast this morning so I slit the package open carefully, hoping not to disturb the contents. Looking in, I can’t see the inside of the envelope in this light so I reach in to pull out my prize.

The pain is excruciating. It hits hard and fast and I pull my hand out immediately, yelping in surprise. I bite my lip to keep from yelling and draw my breath slowly in through my teeth, trying to get some control over myself. My hand is throbbing with bolts of pain that shoot up my arm and tears prick the corners of my eyes. One of the inhabitants of the package crawls out.

P. Clavata is also known as the bullet ant. It’s so called because the pain from the sting is said to resemble being shot. Having never been shot I can’t vouch for it, but I can say with absolute certainty that it fucking hurts. An entomologist name Justin Schmidt, who invented a scale for how much various insect bites and stings hurt, rated the bullet ant over his maximum rating of 4.0 and described the pain as “Pure, intense, brilliant… Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.” Anyone who decides to make it their professional business to research how much various things hurt is at the very least dedicated to their craft.

I rush to the freezer and wrench the door open with my off hand, grabbing a handful of ice cubes and wrapping them in a grimy yellow tea towel, applying it to the now trembling hand. The ice does almost nothing to help, the pain just as bright as it was before, but if there’s going to be swelling this might at least bring it down. I pace around the room the same way you might after stubbing a toe, muttering curses under my breath and trying to control my breathing. It’s not really working and mostly I feel ridiculous for pacing around my dining room. Who knows what the neighbors are thinking, but given their penchant for midnight dance parties I’m not too inclined to worry about it.

Going back to the living room, I get the package and look inside the small plastic box inside. There are three ants still in there with a sparse scattering of heavily chewed and browning leaves, added seemingly as an afterthought as though by a child who is trying to be thoughtful but not fully appreciating what it means to separate a colony insect from its brethren. This means two are missing, the one I saw earlier and another somewhere else. There is ­no way these things are going to go roaming around the apartment. I go to the kitchen and dress for battle, donning two oven mitts, being careful with the left hand. Grabbing a sheet of scrap paper from the kitchen table, I go back to the living room to hunt them down. The first is easy enough to find, still crawling around in the middle of the floor. I thrust the sheet of paper under it and, tilting it to keep the ant on top, shake it into its package. After closing the flap on the envelope, I go looking again. This one’s nowhere near as exposed, and I start moving furniture to track it down. The living room falls into a slow sort of disarray as I start pawing ineffectually through baskets looking for the fugitive ant, having little success. Finally I undertake to move the couch, kneeling on the floor and trying to drag it with just one hand, revealing a colony of change, dust bunnies and – there. I scoop it up quickly, run back to the envelope and return it, closing it firmly and putting it on the dining room table.

Throwing off the gloves with a frustrated flick of my hands like a prizefighter winning a poor matchup, I flop into the couch in a state of tooth-gritting malaise. One of my friends thinks that it’s a distinctly male thing to get angry as a reflexive pain response and I briefly wonder if this is true. Vainly, I reapply the ice pack, quickly discovering that my hand is now very cold in addition to being in excruciating pain. This isn’t working. I let the towel of ice drop to the floor and close my eyes, draping my arm over them and trying to think of something else, anything. I think about Christmas and the influx of greeting cards that inevitably comes around this time of year. I think of crisply sealed and clearly branded Amazon boxes and boots in Quebec and when and why I thought it was a good idea to buy five bullet ants off the internet? Was I drinking? I don’t think I’ve ever managed to order a package in a state where I couldn’t remember it. Was I reading about the Schmidt Sting Pain Index and so enthused about his little one-line reviews of the stings that I wanted to see what all the hype was about? I can’t remember and mostly just want to curl up and wait for it to be over. It seems to abate a little bit now that I’ve stopped moving around and trying to make it better. Resigning to the pain and keeping from getting worked up over it might just be a part of the process. I turn on some music and throw it on shuffle, briefly considering making a playlist entitled “Music to endure 12-hour insect stings by” but realize that

a) It would probably involve using both hands.

and

b) That trying to make the most of this experience is psychotic and maybe I should just lay down and stop trying to do something.

I lie down and listen to music for the next few hours, getting up to try and get something to eat or drink from time to time but mostly just elevating the hand and leaning it against the wall. The time starts to pass and the pain has subsided to a dull throb. Not pleasant, but bearable. I sit at the computer and jiggle the mouse a little bit, waiting for it to wake up. The web browser is predictably still open and I login to my eBay page, looking at the sellers waiting for feedback. There’s only the one at the moment and I double check the product entry.

L@@K! 5 P. Clavata Bullet Ants Insects Live!

This auction is for 5 Bullet Ants from Paraguay! P. Clavata has one of the most painful insect stings in all of the animal kingdom and 10 bites from one can KILL A MAN! Buyer handles at own risk, no refunds unless good is damaged in transit.

I shrug and go back to the seller’s page, entering my feedback.

Product as described, arrived hastily. A++, WOULD BUY AGAIN!