by Tom Karlin

Created on: April 24, 2008

Bugs; you either love them or hate them. What other choice is there? First let's look at a bug we love, or at least feel a certain fondness towards. It's our tiny little friend, the Ladybug. It is a quiet unassuming insect that won't attack us, unless provoked of course. I'm only kidding about the attack part, because I've never met anyone who has been seriously injured by a Ladybug. Whenever I come across a Ladybug in the home, I do my very best to make sure it is safely escorted outdoors, where it can resume it's duties of flying about and devouring pesky little aphids and the occasional moth egg. We love them because they do all they can to protect our precious garden plants. The more one thinks about it though, for the most part, being born a bug isn't an ideal life.

I can't help but feel sorry for the majority of the bug family. First off, bugs aren't very bright, and perhaps for that reason, millions are killed each year in automobile accidents. It's almost impossible to survive a head on collision with an obstacle weighing about a billion times your weight and flying at you at 100 mph. Okay, before I get too far off the subject of bugs in the home, let me tell you that I was once a kid. That may not mean much to you, but to me, it meant a lot. It meant I had to go through a crazy period. That crazy stage was when I was very young, before I even heard of the concept of peer pressure. Let me just say that I found a June bug in our apartment one day, and since it appeared lost, I decided to take care of it. Yes, I befriended an ordinary beetle. That was a pretty sad stage in my life, now that I look back, because at least with a real pet, you can tell your friends about it. I suppose the June bug wasn't as much a pet as an experiment. I was curious about it, because it was bigger than most of the bugs around the yard and I wanted to study it for a while. I cared for it, the best I knew how, by putting it in a large plastic bowl, where it wouldn't be squashed by a large human foot, and added a little water and some leaves and grass. For the most part it slept; if that's what bugs do, in its manufactured home, underneath my bed. It went to sleep around the same time as I did, or at least I thought it did. Perhaps that was my imagination, since I learned that they are nocturnal creatures. I always thought it was an early riser, since I could hear it walking around the bowl early in the morning.

Although a difficult decision, I let the June bug free after a few weeks. It was probably for the best, before we become too attached. I'm sure my tiny critter friend missed the luxury of indoor living, but was probably better off in the long run. Although we'll never know, this story might have even had a fairy tale ending. Perhaps June bug found a mate in the natural world and raised precious little grubs who feasted on nutritious delicacies, like the luscious roots of our lawn.

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