Homo Coleoptera

A short story

Leaving aside his beetle collection, most of Mr Ghosh´s prized possessions had been won in contests. Early on in life he had realised that all he had to do, once he had filled the form and cut along the dotted line, was to send in his entry and then simply will the prizes his way. When it came to contests, he had the willpower of a bull. Nine times out of ten it worked. He had paid for more than half his mortgage with prize money collected and saved over the years. The bank job paid for the other half. His second car had magically arrived at his doorstep one morning, some weeks after he had filled in a multiple answer questionnaire about a new brand of milk chocolate, and completed a slogan that said, "Milky Mints are the best because milk is for health and mint is for taste." It wouldn´t have mattered much had Mr Ghosh written, "Because they come in real handy when you want to throw up." He would have won the blue Esteem anyway. Simply because he had willed it to happen.

In fact, Mr Ghosh was sure, as he rubbed his cleanshaven chin with thin, artistic fingers, if most of the really good contests weren´t rigged to benefit some distant relation of the Managing Director, he´d have been a millionaire by now and would have travelled the globe twice over on airline-ticket prizes. Had he travelled the globe thus, thought Mr Ghosh dreamily, ensconced in his red armchair with The Further Expanded Beetle Encyclopaedia (opened at S – Scarabaeoida) on his lap, he would have been able to obtain the predaceous Diving Beetle from North America. He would have hunted for species of Amphizoidae in Tibet. And he wouldn´t have had to order the enormous, shiny, seven-inch long Africa] Goliath from the Coleoptera Collectors´ Society. What a beauty it was! He might have come upon it himself, crawling through the quiet leafy undergrowth of an African jungle. The Initial Sighting. The Stalk. The Inching Closer. A sudden, strong splutter of wings and six crawly legs frantically pawing at the still, humid air. And the giant would be his.