Our pet termite

I had expected this day to be somewhat of a letdown after the excitement of Tuesday, but it has proved to be a nice relaxing interlude, not at all unpleasant. My husband is listening to a book tape, and I am simmering a beef stew on the stove, one of the few dishes I actually enjoy cooking. I always make a large pot so we can have leftovers the following day. This is a good time to blog.
I came across a story i wrote a few years ago, that I would like to share. It is a true story and it happened in our little vacation cabin on the top of Starret Hill in Monte Rio. Every word in it is true, or it is as I remember it.

MY PET TERMITE

I must warn my readers that the material contained in this story is both graphic and disgusting. So you must read at your own peril. My story goes as follows:
"What do you think this is?" asked my husband as he came into the cabin. He was carrying something on a small piece of plywood, and seemed to be somewhat afraid of dropping the thing.
From where I was standing by the sink, it looked like a freshly dropped turd, and I hurriedly demanded that he flush it down the drain and throw the piece of plywood into the fire.
"I can't do that," he responded, coming a little closer, and then I saw that the thing was alive. Not only was it alive, it was surrounded and partly covered with tiny squirming worms. Now I knew what it was! Just what we had always wanted - termites. The large creature, a queen was a dirty white. She was about five inches long, and seemed to pulsate. The little whitish ones, now trying to cover the queen, were the workers.
"Those are termites." I informed him, "And I don't know how to kill them. I suppose we could spray them with something and kill them that way."
"Good idea," he responded and sprayed them with mosquito repellent, which caused the little workers to curl up immediately and fall lifeless onto the piece of plywood. The queen remained placidly pulsating and opening and closing her mouth. She had no eyes and seemed not in the least uncomfortable in her new surroundings. In fact, she began to open and close the aperture from which the eggs would emerge, and we were at a loss to know what to do with her.
"Let's put her in a jar and keep her for a couple of days," suggested my husband. "We could think of her as a pet."
It was not an unreasonable idea. Over the course of many years, we had had not only the usual dogs and cats, but a turtle, a hermit crab, an ant farm, fish, a bird, and a pet snake. So why not a queen termite?
"Or," suggested my husband, who is exceptionally practical, "We could eat it. I have the barbecue out on the deck. We could barbecue it."
Why not? We have always been adventurous eaters. In the course of my long life, I have eaten and enjoyed frogs legs, pigs brains, blood sausage, head cheese, pigs feet, snails, oysters, shrimp, crawdads, and so on. I have even eaten ants and grubs in sour cream dip, and once, I tasted crow and had several feasts of eels. What could be so horrible about a queen termite? We could even pan fry her. But alive? We couldn't figure out how to kill her.
In the end we kept her for several days in a jar, and watched with interest as she placidly lay there, waiting for help from her workers, who never came. There seemed only one thing to do - we tossed her into the wood burner while a good fire was going, and cremated her, still alive.
Were we monsters or humanitarians? Since the termites had already eaten up a good part of the cabin, we considered that we had gotten even, and had the cabin tented and fumigated, and eliminated the whole bunch. If there was only one queen, that is, We will never know. In the end, I think the termites will win.