Don’t look now, but we’re surrounded. And vastly outnumbered – about two hundred million to one. So much for escape. Bugs are everywhere: crawling, slithering, squirming, sucking, munching, mating, buzzing, biting.
Amy Stewart’s creepy new popular science book, Wicked Bugs, notes that many bugs are beneficial, necessary to the cycle of life and the food chain. But she’s more interested in the dark side of the relationship between humans and nature, as readers of her previous best-seller Wicked Plants well know.
This volume is just as witty and informative, illustrated with detailed etchings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs that make most of the subjects — African bat bugs to the zombie–like jewel wasp — look as if they starred in ‘50s horror flick about radiation gone wrong. (Remember the monster mutants in Them!)
Of course, a number are downright deadly, full of poisonous venom that paralyses the nervous system (certain spiders, scorpions, and the well-named assassin bugs). Parasites hop along for the ride and infiltrate innards. Flies, fleas and cockroachess carry filth and disease. As Stewart observes: “Flea vomit is the true culprit in a plague epidemic.’’
Her curious anecdotes often have a high ick factor. Body lice helped bring down Napoleon’s army. A man woke up with a nose full of maggots after a fly laid its eggs in his nostrils. And, yes, roaches will crawl in ears. Euwwww.
If you think staying inside is going to help, well, consider bed bugs. They dine on you. Silverfish eat books. Weevils flourish in meal. Termites chew on wood. What’s that tick-tock sound in your wall? Oh, just the death-watch beetle.
Florida is paradise for bugs. The Mediterranean fruit fly. Fire ants. Roundworms. Deer ticks. And what Stewart considers the most wicked bug of all – mosquitoes, whose saliva transmits hundreds of fevers and diseases, “making them the world’s most deadly insect. Malaria is believed to have killed more people than all wars combined.’’
Now you know. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…!
Open Book: I received an advance reading copy of Amy Stewart’s Wicked Bugs from publisher Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. It arrived with a stuffed bookworm that looks like a giant deformed banana with huge googly eyes. Terrifying.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 