Girlz and Bugz

I have a confession to make.

I loved bugs.

As a girl, I played with roly-polys, caught grasshoppers and fireflies by the score, was mesmerized by butterflies and horseflies alike and could spend hours staring at a bumblebee hopping from flower to flower. I begged for an ant farm because my magnifying glass was no help at all once the ants retreated under ground. (Did not receive one, BTW. Not bitter any more.)

I loved live bugs. I was horrified the first time I saw scarab beetles pinned to a storage box, little paper slips defining and naming them. I could not believe people would capture anything just to pin it to a piece of wood.

We had a wasp nest drop from a tree in our front yard the year I was in third grade. Despite all admonitions to the contrary, on a cold day I slipped it into a paper bag, hauled it to school and gleefully tore it open to surprise my teacher.  She was more than surprised as angry wasps swooped out and terrorized the rest of the class.

Since those were the days students could get spanked for far less than bringing a live wasp nest to class, I was fortunate to just get an exasperated, "ANNE!!" as she threw open all the windows and sent me off to the library. Talk about rewarding bad behavior.

This same teacher learned to have me empty my pockets after recess because somehow a menagerie of grasshoppers would end up there, and on a less diligent day, usually loose in the classroom.

She really deserves an extra jewel in her crown for not arranging an accident.

Somewhere along the line, my fascination waned. Spiders began to creep me out more. Bugs began to be something to smash, not study under magnifying glasses. I learned to look at butterfly collections impassively.  In third grade, I had other kids who thought bugs were cool, but as I aged, then switched schools, my love for bugs was just one more weird thing about me, in a large pool of weird things.

But once upon a time, I was a girl who loved bugs.