It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was an adult vine weevil, about one centimeter long, rusty brown with distinct gingery flecks on my back. My characteristic pronounced snout and elbowed antenna were neat, clean, shaved, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-groomed garden pest ought to be. I was notching the bases of shrub foliage.

I went out at the French doors and along a smooth red-flagged path that skirted the far side of the lawn from the garage. A boyish-looking chauffeur had a big black and chromium sedan out now and was dusting that. The path took me along to the side of the greenhouse and a butler opened the door for me and stood aside. It opened into a sort of vestibule that was about as warm as a slow oven. He came in after me, shut the outer door, opened an inner door and we went through that. Then it was really hot. The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants. The light had an unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium tank. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.

The butler did his best to get me through without being smacked in the face by the sodden leaves, and after a while we came to a clearing in the middle of the jungle, under the domed roof. I was still staring at the wide green leaves when a door opened far back under the stairs. It was a gardener.

"You're cute," she giggled. "I'm cute too."

I didn't say anything. She had come into the garden armed with a torch. I would have to scramble to lay my eggs in the compost.