Bug Bomb

I got that call I'd hoped never to get. Thousands of lives gone in an instant. The culprits? Two dragonflies, their lifeless carcasses mute testimony to the price they'd paid for the wanton act of terror they'd prepetuated less than an hour earlier.

Two hills, literally decimated, the remaining living within wounded more than just physically, this would be a trauma they'd carry forever, each within themselves, like a giant breadcrumb.

"Well, at least they were only ants," said one of the first responders, a Japanese Beetle mounted on the back of a drone honey bee, himself an EMT (Emergency Mound Technician) as a group of crickets clicked the news out to a shocked insectoid kingdom.

"Only ants? Have you forgotten what you are?" asked the chief of the Firefly Department as a clot of horsefly photographers tried to get closer to the scene to record it with their 10,000 lenses. A group of citizen fireflyarazzi lighted the scene with their flashbulbs as if on cue.

Meanwhile, somewhere a lady mantis -- post-mating -- devoured her mate while a spider hanging from a branch looked on with something like amusement. A half world away Gregor Samsa awoke, looked in the mirror and exclaimed "WTF!"