Although at the last second he saw the descending hand, he didn't have time to evade it. Jeff felt the sudden slap from the man's gigantic hand. The giant hand raked a shimmering cloud of multicolored scales from his wings, not to mention the stinging sensation all over his body from the near miss.
"I could have been crushed," Jeff realized belatedly. "Like a bug!"
It finally dawned on him that his nonchalant attitude, holding that he would no doubt get back to normal reasonably soon, might not be, strictly speaking, terribly reasonable.
When the huge man saw what he had slapped off his shoulder, he gave a snort of laughter. "A fucking butterfly!"
Jeff's wings, deprived of the scales that helped to keep him aloft, felt less efficient as he hovered near the giant man. "What in the hell's a butterfly doing inside the house?" The man said aloud, his mind instantly making mental notes to double-check for possible points of entry. If a butterfly could slip into the house, so could a whole range of much less desirable bugs.
Still, he had the minor problem of what should he do with this particular bug. In his line of work, one bug's pretty much the same as any other bug.
"I can't let you stay here," he said. "What kind of exterminator would I be to let a bug roam free?"
Jeff listened with rising unease.
"I know," the man said, a prelude to rummaging through a pack and producing a small plastic container with a secure lid.
"You should work just fine for my kid's show-and-tell," he said, shooting out his massive hand again to grab Jeff.