I'm Going To Be Rich!

It seemed like when my friend Alicia and I lived in our apartment in Hollywood, weird things always happened around us. Maybe it was the area we were in or the company we were surrounded by, but Hollywood was (and still is) a strange place. I swear there was about sixteen people living in the two bedroom apartment to our right and our landlord drove a Bentley and a Range Rover and was once threatened by our upstairs neighbor with a machete. Alicia and I were clearly on the patio spying on that drunken shenanigan. We were also on the patio spying on our neighbor across the street one night when his girlfriend busted in yelling at him, threatening to tell his wife about their relationship until he picked her up and threw her over the fence. The neighbors to our left were always throwing crazy Quinceaneras every weekend with flashing neon lights and such loud music that Alicia and I had to scream to talk to each other in our living room. Every morning a guy would sell tamales on the street out of the back of his pick up truck, and one day I came home from work to find a quarter of our living room carpet covered in termites....but the best thing that ever happened in that place was when I thought I discovered a new type of bug.

Alicia and I were out on our patio one night when I saw something moving around on the ground. I turned on the patio light to find a giant bee/ant like creature about two inches in size. Of course I screamed and called Alicia over to check it out. I'm pretty sure we had both been drinking which heightened the excitement of this whole experience but we had never seen anything like the critter we were staring at. I immediately grabbed a Tupperware from the cabinet and captured it, convinced that I had just discovered a new species. I honestly started to look up different museums that may be looking for new types of insects and was already planning out how I would spend my millions after I received some prestigious, scientific award.  Not knowing what to do with my little moneymaker, I stuck it in the freezer to preserve it like any great scientist would do. I even called over our friend Brian to inspect him and ensure me that I had in fact uncovered something fabulous. He agreed and told me I needed to get that thing into the National History Museum or something. I was so proud that I snapped a picture and sent it to my friend, Beth. Of course that girl knows every time of flower, tree, bird, cat and bug and wrote back, "that's a Potato Bug (also known as a Jerusalem Cricket) you dummy!" So I Googled 'Potato Bug' and sure enough that stinking bug was all over the Internet already. Obviously we had never seen such a bug being from Maine because they are native to Western United States and Mexico. I'm actually glad Beth was the one who called me a dummy and not the editor of the scientific journal whom I was already drafting a letter to....