Growing up, I was picky about which boys and bugs I liked. Both had to be cute and funny; like Donny Osmond and ladybugs. In reality, I didn‘t care much for bugs and liked boys way too much.
I never cared for little boys as they were dirty, smelly, sticky and loud. Then God blessed me with twin baby boys and that all changed. As my love for those little boys grew, so did my appreciation for the bugs they were fascinated in.
Elephant and giraffe would be bypassed at the zoo to be the first in line at the Insect House! I began to see insects through the little eyes of my boys and soon my fears were replaced by appreciation for the intricacies and beauty of these tiny creatures. There was little I would not touch and hold in my attempts to model for my sons that bugs were God’s creation and not to be feared.
We never killed anything in our house. Mice were caught and released into the wild, as were spiders and praying mantises. Only ant and roaches and mosquitoes were exterminated.
Once, when we lived in Honduras, we opened the kitchen door to find mosquitoes had taken over. I sprayed, left the room and returned in fifteen minutes to collect the dead mosquitoes. One by one, beginning on my knees, I carefully picked up each tiny body and placed them in a special box, counting as I went. To my amazement there were one hundred eighty seven tiny dead insects. We never discovered how they made their way into the kitchen but I kept that box for years.
That was the year I sprayed a four inch flying roach and left it to die. The next day I discovered my twelve month old daughter, Adele, sucking on the roach, half of it in her mouth!
Several times during our five years in Costa Rica my maid saved me a bug with the hopes of convincing me to begin killing all the non-human creatures in the house. “They kill you,” She told me, “If you are bitten, you will have a heart attack and die!” I just laughed and told her to take it outside, only to later discover she was right. They are called Assassin Bugs, Kissing Bugs, or ‘chagas’ in Honduras. About thirty years after getting bitten, the heart will fail and death will come. There is no cure or treatment.
Loving my boys helped me love bugs. My boys have now outgrown their fascination with bugs and their interests have moved on to music, movies and girls. I still love bugs but not near as much as I love my boys. If God had not blessed me with boys, I would have never known the joy of bugs.