[Ed. Note: This piece was originally written in 1991. It has been updated through the years with the names of various girlfriends and significant others, but remains otherwise unchanged. Good for a much-needed laugh while you watch your retirement savings melt away. Enjoy. P.S. Yes, I was trying much harder back then to be Dave Barry.]

It’s time for me to express some righteous indignation at the way Congress is handling the budget deficit crisis. With each side shouting like, um, some great loud shouting thing, claiming everything is all the other side’s fault, all they’re really doing is avoiding the tough decisions. What these guys, Democrat and Republican alike, really need is a heavy dose of bravery – applied to the head with a two-by-four, or perhaps a large and rather heavy shovel.

Bravery isn’t all that hard to come by but, then again, neither are shovels. I found some – bravery, that is – myself, a couple weeks ago, during the Great Mosquito Hawk crisis. My girlfriend and I were lying peacefully in bed, when she suddenly screamed, “Kill it! Kill it! KILL IT!!!” Next I heard a wild beating sound, like something was beating wildly or something, when I came face-to-face with the evil It. A giant mosquito hawk was flying about the bedroom, bouncing off the walls and breaking lamps. And Melissa wanted it dead – which meant I had a job to do.

Now, I’m a fairly nature-oriented type guy, so I don’t really like to kill bugs – especially mosquito hawks. I mean, they’re the good guys of the Insect Kingdom. Their only job is to eat mosquitoes that would otherwise be sucking the blood out of my body without my express, written consent. However, this particular mosquito hawk had already eaten its fair share of mosquitoes, which I could tell by its size (eighteen pounds, or in metric, twenty epigrams) and because there was a wet spot on the dresser where our cat had been sleeping. Good thing we don’t have any kids, since this winged monster could have gobbled up an infant in less time that it takes to get turned down for extended credit. (Unless, of course, you’re Congress.)

So, Melissa convinced me, with logical, coherent, panic-stricken, orthoscopic surgery-inducing tugs on my arm, that the mosquito hawk must die. No easy feat, there. The logistics involved in killing a forty-pound (metric: 1,200 pentagrams) insect with a wingspan the size of former Soviet Republics are quite complex, not to mention more than a little icky. Fortunately, there is a sound, Darwinian reason why Man will always prevail over Insect: We are, by grace of natural selection, armed with spray cans filled with bug-killing chemicals which we are usually smart enough not to spray into our own faces. On the other hand, the can of Raid was in the kitchen, meaning I had somehow to maneuver my naked body through a small doorway guarded by a two-hundred pound (nine million holograms) insect armed with barbed fangs and a baseball bat.

At this point I should probably take a moment and admit that I am not, as I tried to claim earlier, a genuine Nature Boy. I really only like nature a little. OK – actually, I hate nature and all things natural and would like nothing better than just to pave everything, except, perhaps, for extremely scenic areas which could instead be shellacked and encased in glass as National Strategic Beauty Preserves. Besides, this monster bug was in my bedroom, completely contrary to the purpose of having a place called “indoors.”

Mustering every last bit of bravery in my too-thin, far-too-close-to-a-huge-raving-loon-of-an-insect body, I began to flail about near the doorway in a fit of fear which can be described only as looking like a cross between a Parkinson’s victim and the late Richard M. Nixon attempting to tango while on speed. My best hope now was that the bug would become paralyzed with laughter and unable to stop me as I slipped out to the kitchen for the Raid.

This idea, which we will call Plan A, almost worked.

The Mutant Bug from Hell did, indeed, laugh at my comical thrashing, but instead of freezing, it lunged straight for my chest.

There I was, trying to sneak backwards through the doorway, with enormous insect wings flapping against my pathetic little patch of chest “hair.” Melissa joined in the laughter, but I, being a death-before-dishonor Man of Action, shivered helplessly and emitted a long, slow, deep, quiet, “woo” noise from deep inside my soul.

Since the mosquito hawk was still trying to beat holes in my chest instead of suffering a quiet, dignified, chemical-induced insect death, it dawned on my addled brain that Plan A might not be working. I let loose another “woo” sound and began to formulate Plan B. Meanwhile, my frightened, helpless girlfriend, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, said, “Stop going ‘woo’ and get the Raid.”

There it was! The plan of action I needed! It was bold, it was daring, but it just might work!

For those not paying close attention, Melissa’s Plan B was exactly the same as that rousing success I like to call “Plan A.”

With the excuse the that I could now pin any further failures on my girlfriend, I shook off the urge to crawl up into the fetal position and let this Ivan the Terrible of mosquito hawks have his way with me, marched to the kitchen, stubbed my toe on a chair (she had never once mentioned turning on the lights as part of Plan B) and grabbed the can of Raid. My fear subsided as I realized that I was in control now. Call me Beastmaster, for I was holding deadly, cancer-causing toxins in a rusty spray can so old it appeared to be left over from the Eisenhower Administration, back when everyone knew that deadly, cancer-causing toxins – and lots of them – were the key to a better, Stalin-free future.

I took the can firmly in hand, centered my finger squarely on the nozzle, aimed steadily and directly at my nemesis – when it turned and attacked again, flying right into my face.

But I could not be turned from my destructive ends. Some primal killing urge had taken over my body and mind, some irresistible instinct for survival left over from the prehistoric days of saber-toothed tigers and cannibalistic insurance salesmen (which still exist today). So I dropped the can on my stubbed toe and went “woo.”

Melissa has never laughed so hard.

The mosquito hawk, somehow sensing that I was not an adversary to be feared, turned back to the bedroom to finish off my girlfriend or maybe to ask her out for drinks. Picturing my beloved in the arms of another bug, I knew what had to be done. I pried the can out of my toe and prepared to do battle unto death. With all the intensive military training that only watching three consecutive Rambo films can provide, I aimed and fired, letting loose a stream of chemicals so potent Melissa complains about the stench to this day.

The mosquito hawk, all seventy-three feet, eight-hundred pounds (17,000,000,000 telegrams) of him, curled into a tiny ball, fell to the floor and died. Which proves that Congress, too, can summon the bravery to face the giant, growing insect of the deficit, and end it by taking the deadly chemicals of higher taxes and spraying them into our faces.