Hamish the Corgi is almost a person. He has plans. He has dignity. He is hampered in life only by his tiny, T. Rex front legs and his lack of thumbs. Sometimes while he watches me analyze data and write I just know he gets it. And if he could speak in my language he would engage in discourse.

But then. A bug wanders past. It is happening right now. I can see him trying to ignore it but first his eyes, then his ears flickered in the direction of the bug. It’s one of those triangular bodied bugs, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, that show up in the winter sometimes.  Hamish can’t resist a good stink bug.

He is sprawled on the floor, holding the stink bug cupped in his meaty little paws. Oops, it just “escaped” and he had to pounce a little to get it back in the dog paw corral. I guess that got boring and he just rolled onto his side and rubbed his face all over the bug. He is laying there, all corgi limp, and I figure that he likes the feeling of the stink bug wiggling between his cheek and the wood floor.

As we sit here in the office, me with my article draft and data tables, Hamish with his Marmorated Stink Bug, I begin to wonder about Hamish’s plans, dignity, and potential. It just is not easy to look intellectually engaged when you are laying on your side, pressing a stink bug into the floor with your cheek and a crazy look in your eyes. Try it, you’ll see.

The stink bug made it from the wood floor to the carpet (probably an epic-heroic journey through corgi whiskers and fur) and I thought I might intervene and toss the little bug out the window before its stink got rubbed into the rug. Hamish sat up and glared at me when I leaned forward from my chair. Okaaaay. I sat back.

So here we are. Détente.

I will give Hamish a moment to resolve the situation on his own.

He is holding Stink Bug in his paw corral again. Thinking.

He just leaned in to nose around in the paw corral. His mouth opened a little and, oh man, he did it, that bug is Gone. Down the gullet after some dramatic lip curled chewing.

And there we have it. Hamish is not, in fact, a person.