The Moth

Yesterday, after getting coffee with my friend, Molly, I began my long drive home. Soon after I got onto the highway, a large moth struck my car. He was about the size of a hotwheel. I watched him fly towards me--a leaf, a piece of paper, a cloth--and disappear under my car. Or so I thought.

As I continued to drive, I saw him. He had struck my windshield low, at its base, and was now caught beneath the wiper. Half of him was on each side, his wings flapping frantically on both sides of the wiper.

I gasped, and started to press my toes on the break. Maybe if I stopped he could escape. But I was on the highway, in the middle lane. The cars surrounding me were moving 65 mph and up. Stopping would put me in danger, put the other drives in the road on danger, and I doubt that moth would've survived a fiery crash. So I speeded back up.

From the time I first noticed him to the time I exited the highway, I periodically looked in his direction. Wondering if he died upon impact, wondering if he was still alive, wondering if the wind hitting the hood of my car would rip him apart before he had a chance to escape. The exit that leads from the highway to my hometown ends, as many exits do, with a street and a stoplight. As soon as I stopped, he started moving.

Not the wind flapping his wings, but his own damn determination. He crawled, pivoting his body, and now I could see his tiny eyes and mothy eyebrows. But part of his body was stilled pinned down by the wiper and the light turned green.

As I drove the final five minutes of my commute I spoke to comfort or encourage him. "Don't worry, the drive will be over soon. Hold on, little guy."

But by the time we reached my house, he had stopped moving without the assistance of the wind. When I parked and switched the car off, his body stopped moving all together. I tapped the glass nearby him, just to see if he'd move. Maybe a bit of him was still living. He had seemed determined to hold onto life. In my mind, he was the Aron Ralston of moths, and maybe he'd be trapped under my windshield wiper for 127 moth-hours and have to amputate part of his own wing, but he'd survive it.

But he didn't move, not even when I exited the car and tapped the glass closer to his head. He was dead. And my heart kind of hurt.

It's times like these, when I'm sad about dead moths or people losing their stuffed animals or learning someone's colorblind, that I think my fear of becoming a monster is absurd. Nobody cries when reading a post about a young boy asking Santa for his sister's relief from bullies and then, in a decade, starts taking advantage of people. That's an aside.

I went into my house hoping that a bird would eat the moth. Then at least the moth's death would have some purpose. But when I came out to my car this morning, he was still there.

Dew had covered my windshield, but I didn't want to flip on my wiper. I didn't want to destroy his corpse, and I didn't want part of him--liquid or ripped up wings--to remain on my windshield.

I had to get gas before heading to school. The gas station was close to my house. As soon as I started pumping gas, I grabbed a paper towel and walked to the front of my car. I lifted up the windshield wiper that he was stuck under, and immediately he started moving.

He'd survived the night. My first thought was that I should've lifted the wiper last night when I got home. Maybe he'd still have enough in him to survive. He was moving, but he couldn't quite pull himself out, so I used the paper towel to push him free.

His body was broken. There was no survival in his future. It would've been merciful if I had squashed his body, but I couldn't do it. I'm always rooting for an underdog. He fell into the crevice by my hood, and I sat the wiper down. "Don't go there either," I muttered. Logically, I knew that he wouldn't make it. His body--moths' bodies are furry, did you know that?--was bent, he no longer had control of one of his wings. And I stared with a whimper.

"Do you know how to do that?" A man asked from behind me.
"Huh?" I replied, half dazed.
"To put the wiper back on?" He was in his thirties, attractive, hispanic, wearing a Chiefs sweatshirt.
"Oh, no, there was a moth stuck in the wiper," I kind of pointed at it.
"Oh, an animal."
"I kind of don't want to touch it."

He--the man--used his keys to push the moth into an opening. He took the paper towel from me, and picked it up.

"I'd kind've assumed it was dead," I explained.
"Yeah, I think it's dead," he said.
"Thank you," I replied, as he carried the moth away.

I wonder if he thought I was too squeamish to touch it. Or maybe he thought I viewed myself as "too good" to remove moth corpses from my windshield. Or maybe he could see that I just didn't was to desecrate the body. Maybe he realized that I felt guilty about the moth's death. Maybe he just wanted to help a quiet girl with galactic tights at a gas station.

I looked around and he was gone--the man and the moth. I thought to myself, "There's no way he knows how much I appreciate what he just did for me."