“Don’t kill it!” I shrieked, leaping to action. The object of my protection was a slender gray bug with a lot of legs. It had the misfortune of revealing itself in the kitchen sink when my husband was around. But I was too late. He squished it. “It wasn’t hurting anybody,” I said sulkily. “Poor thing.”
Thus rages the battle in our house all summer. The bugs crawl in. I think we can cohabit in peace. My husband prefers they rest in peace.
When I discover a spider or some slithery insect, I gently catch it in a piece of tissue and free it into the wilds of the back yard. They have a life. My husband prefers the squish, swat or stomp approach. “This is war!” he declares.
Last night I watched mournfully as he deposited a large smashed critter corpse in the garbage. “It was a giant brown jumping roach! Really disgusting!” he said.
“Roaches don’t jump,” I said. Having lived in Dallas, I’ve seen roaches kick down front doors — and even fly — but never jump. Scrolling through photos of brown jumping insects on the Internet, I discovered the deceased was a brown cricket. “Crickets are good luck,” I said. “Well, his luck wasn’t so good,” he answered.
Later, the appearance of another cricket in the basement sent my daughter scurrying upstairs to snatch a massive dictionary as a weapon.
Fortunately, the wily cricket escaped to a dark corner. I cheered his evasive tactics. “You don’t want those breeding in your basement,” my husband warned.
Which made me wonder. Do I? Is my live-and-let-live approach wise or am I aiding and abetting armies of arthropods that will someday mount an uprising and march a million strong across my home as if in some horror flick?
I called Jim Louderman, a collections assistant for the Field Museum and an environmental biologist who specializes in insects. He has two tarantulas for pets. If anybody would be sympathetic toward bugs, it would be he:
Q. Can humans and bugs live harmoniously in a house together, or must there be war?
A. There are so many insects and spiders living in a house that you never see, so you are living harmoniously with them.
Q. How many bugs are in my house that I don’t know about?
A. Probably thousands. Spiders living in the ceiling, living in the walls, little red ants that occasionally come out inside the house and the foundation. There are insects and spiders everywhere. In your house there could be a couple of hundred species.
Q. Why are there more in the summer?
A. More insects are awake during the summer. They just happen to end up in the house. They aren’t necessarily looking to be in the house. Most insects go into diapause — hibernation — in the wintertime, so they’re just not active. They are asleep in your house or outdoors. In the spring, they come back and they’re active and you see them.
Q. What are they doing all day?
A. Insects are looking for little bits of food or other insects to eat. They are looking for a way to make a living and stay alive.
Q. Why do we think we have to kill every bug we see?
A. A lot of it has to do with literature and movies. In a movie, if you see bugs, somebody is going to die or somebody is going to get hurt. Bugs are depicted as being bad. Most insects are not very harmful to humans, a lot are pests, but they can’t do any harm. Many, in fact, are beneficial — pollinators, decomposers or predators of harmful insects.
Q. If you don’t smash or remove bugs from your home, will they breed a massive army and take over?
A. It depends on the insect. If you’re talking about termites or carpenter ants, if you don’t get rid of those, they will damage your home. There are some insects you shouldn’t feel guilty about killing, but there are some insects you shouldn’t kill.
Q. What about little black ants?
A. You should get rid of them or the colony will get bigger and bigger. Ants leave a pheromone trail to the food they are going after. When you kill them and wipe up the dead ants with soap and water, you eliminate the pheromone trail.
Q. And earwigs? They’re having a national convention in my kitchen and family room.
A. The earwig is primarily a plant feeder or scavenger. They are basically harmless. However, they can damage garden plants and be household pests. They cannot crawl into people’s ears, an old superstition or wives tale. That’s where the name earwig comes from. They can inflict a mildly painful pinch of short duration with their cerci (pinchers). I’ve been pinched by earwigs. It’s just a tiny bit of venom. If you find them in the house just throw them outside.
Q. How about spiders? I swear a spider bit me in my sleep one night.
A. If you’re in bed and it’s in the bed and you roll over on it, sometimes a spider will bite as a defense to get you to roll off before you squish it. More likely it was a flea or a fly. You want spiders in your house because of the fleas and flies and mites that will suck your blood. That’s what the spiders eat. And spiders don’t want to bite you because they know you are too big to be a meal, and if they bite you they’ve wasted their venom.
I’m sitting here playing with a little jumping spider right now. He’s running around and jumping on and off my hand. They’re cute little spiders. I’m sure you have them in your house.
Q. You’re probably the only person who calls spiders cute.
A. The jumping spiders have two real big eyes in front when you see them under a microscope. Their eyes make them look cute. And they have a hair pattern on their head that looks like they’re smiling at you.
Q. Can I just let crickets chirp in my basement?
A. Crickets can’t do any damage. They don’t bite, but they are dirty animals. They’ll eat anything. They defecate where they eat. They don’t do any harm, but they don’t do any good.
Q. What about moths that fly in at night?
A. There is only one very small group of moths (very tiny moths) that eat clothes, and it’s the caterpillars not the moths — 99.99 percent of moths do not eat clothing. They eat leaves and flowers. The adults drink nectar from flowers. Most moths are pollinators of flowers. They’re good guys. Just put them outside.
Q. I just grab bugs in a piece of tissue and drop them on the lawn.
A. You’re probably damaging them. Catch them in a jar and empty it on a bush or in the grass.
Q. Do bugs have husbands, wives and children? If you kill or relocate a bug, will its family miss it?
A. Once they mate they separate, and they go their own way. There is no maternal instinct in a lot of insects.
Q. Do bugs have feelings?
A. I just don’t know. Some tarantulas seem to have personalities. Insects of the same species do react differently. Every tarantula is a little different in the way it reacts. I have two Chilean rose-haired tarantulas at home. One seems to be much more docile than the other. One I hold (the docile one). It seems to enjoy being held. The other one doesn’t.
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ctc-tempo@tribune.com
