To compensate for my outburst, I made a valiant, albeit clumsy effort to dangerize the situation:
"Dude, there is something... uh, m-MASSIVELY awry here! THIS WILL NOT STAND! Someone has rigged up a... FEEDING TUBE to something.. BIGGER than both of us!"
"Shmavvy, whathafuck you talkin' bout?" said Dave, untangling his chainy chest and trying to hide the relief this afforded. The jig was up, he was just Dave now.
I showed him the hole in the floor, the sink, and the tube. His enthusiasm crept back into the room, only slightly inhibited by his unfounded suspicion that I was to blame for these anomalies.
"Davey, even if I did drill a hole in the floor, and run a tube through the wall, how would I get all the ladybugs to coagulate upstairs and go through it?"
"You have a point, Shmavvy. Well, the only thing I can suggest is that we flush water down it and see where it pops up."
It took me a moment to comprehend what he was suggesting, because I was still marveling at my use of the word "coagulate."
"No, no no no no no! Dave, we're not trying to commit beetlecide here - this is a delicate situation! These are ladybugs, not fire ants or something."
He stared at me blankly. Clearly the subtleties of insect infestation were lost on him.
"Ok, Gavvy, then we dig," and with that he tossed me a little shovel (for the record it is not clear if the shovel was actually on his person, or just nearby. My bet is on the former). I could see that in his head there was this action music that should've queued right when I snatched the shovel smoothly out of the air. When it didn't sound right, Dave hummed his own: a hybrid of the A-Team theme and The Imperial March. I know Dave well enough to know what scene he was playing out - the one from Predator where Dutch decides to start building jungle weapons and makin with the blackface. I accompanied him on the beatbox as he grabbed a man-sized shovel leaning against the back wall and stormed out through the back porch.
As he began to eyeball exactly where that pipe would most likely be exiting, we had that awkward moment that always punctuates an impromptu vocal duet - he stops humming but I'm not sure if he's just between verses or whatever so I continue beatboxing a minute too long. He shot me a look like I was disturbing his visualization process so I tried to segue into an ol' timey whistle. Look #2... Silence.
"It's coming out here," he said, pointing to a spot a few feet off the corner of the house. Then he looked up at the sun for almost two minutes (I think he was trying to give me the impression that he was checking the time). With a sudden burst of energy he declared, "Let's do it!" and commenced wailing on the frozen ground with the shovel. I tried to join in but the shovel he'd given me was more of a trowel, and every time I got down on my knees to try to get a chunk, muddy snow shrapnel from Dave's frantic stabbings sprayed my face and made me spit. I backed up and just let him go to town, feeling useless but excited.
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