While the copper line hummed through the open gallery window, Imran Bell was on his hands and knees on the lead roof of the museum, his bright yellow jacket flapping against his ribs in the sixty-mile-an-hour gale. In his right hand he held his rechargeable torch. In his left, a wooden trowel and a sack of coarse dry river sand.
“Hold your boots right there, Eren!” Imran called out, shining the white beam across the lead flashing. “Look at the roof valley between the chimney and the low roof wall. That isn’t moss. That’s three thousand lantern beetles clustered three layers deep on the dry mortar. If you step on them with your heavy cart driver boots, the crushed hard shell is slicker than soft soap on an ice pond. You’d slide right off the roof edges into the gorge.”
Eren paused, his armload of copper wire brackets held tight against his leather apron. He looked down at the shimmering emerald carpet that coated the brickwork. “They’re seeking the chimney pipe heat, Imran. The museum chimney is the only warm stone left on the river.”
“Aye, and they have as much right to dry feet as we do,” Imran said, carefully broadcasting three trowelfuls of sharp river sand across the stone ledge, creating a twelve-inch walking strip four feet away from the clustered insects. “We don’t step on them, and we don’t disturb their boundary. A good pest controller doesn’t exterminate an animal that’s giving him free deep-rock tracking data…
