Otherness

I found myself wondering today what the bugs think of the woman in the insect-shield pants, stooping and bending over them like an entomological ecdysiast with a lens.

Nothing is what they're thinking, I think. They just do their "bug" thing, so long as I don't threaten them as a predator might.

I think about them, however, especially about their extraordinary ordinary bugginess.

Take the katydid nymph who rode on my gas cover from my house to the grocery store and then to Lake Cheston and finally to a friend's house yesterday. He was still on my gas cap this morning, till scooped into a patch of grass beneath a leafy tree. Imagine the suctions on the ends of those legs needed to withstand the highway at 55 mph, the muscles in that teeny body.

Take the ladybug perched at the very edge of a lily petal, as if contemplating the depth of the Grand Canyon from the north rim, so vast the space beneath in comparison to the bug. Or the pollen-laden bee mustering his courage (I watched him pump several times before takeoff) before flying off with his golden treasure.


Or the Fragile Forktail damselfly, about an inch in length, that zips into the reeds at the edge of the lake like a flying needle, straight up and down, with gossamer wings.

In Broadsides from the Other Orders, Sue Hubbel writes, "They [bugs] are indifferent to us and our doings, whether we like them or not" (158).

It's a one-way infatuation, and I can live with that.