The Bug Wrangler

He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn’t answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used the blowdryer to force the spiders to move, up the arm of a stuntwoman, across a floor. He was known to the industry as a professional, that he could coax wrenching performances from the crankiest bugs. He was a man famed for producing bug performances that would make people weep in the theaters.

They knew what they were jumping into, he thought, I always split the money square, am I wrong? You take some roach out of a miserable life and put it in pictures. Tame the wildest insects with a flashlight and a little blowdryer technology. Go to the beasts and teach them respect. Take them into your home and live with them. They betray you to the police for giving them this.

At a press conference, he sat at the microphone with a loyal spider whom he tried to coax a positive character statement out of, but he couldn’t use the blowdryer in front of the media, and the spider stood there and said nothing while he sweated and the videotape rolled on forward.