Bugs and Creepy Crawlies and Aliens

Over a thousand bugs in Michigan, and most of them blew through the Heights at one time or another, stopping on Caroline Street, hoping for a handout or residence.

Not all were unwelcome.

“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home…” We’d let those climb across the back of our hands, not alarmed by a six-legged creature.

And fireflies in July on dark nights decorated our lawns, and edges of ponds and marshes. It was easy to imagine fairy lights if you didn’t look too closely at the insect body trapped in fingers and let loose.

Most of the insect visitors and residents were not welcome or wanted.

Every one of us who grew up in the area were familiar with boxelder bugs, their black and red bodies, and the horrendous crunch they made when you stepped on one.

I was on the phone one afternoon, in the days when phones were on the wall, and portable meant as long a cord as you could buy. I wandered into the dining room talking when I noticed one wall twinkling. Tiny silverish wings. I squealed. Termites! How they got in and why they congregated on one wall was not of interest to me at the time, only how to remove them immediately.

Carpenter ants were infrequent and unwelcome guests, big and black and swarming around anything wood they could chew and rework for colonies. In my Florida home, they prefer live oaks, but will crawl inside at night through door frames and cling to the ceiling. Again, I invited my pest control company to offer irresistible hospitality.

Florida boasts the palmetto bug (American cockroach), black and huge, from a half-inch to two inches long, but Michigan has June bugs, which I think are creepier. They’d fly around lights at night with their horrible legs dangling, and didn’t care if they got caught in hair.

One night when I was young, I saw a Luna moth from inside my window, clinging to the screen. Almost four inches long, the luminous, pale green body was gorgeous and unexpected. Never saw another.

Crickets chirped, snuck inside, and ate woolen sweaters, if not stopped, the same as moths. Believing the Japanese legend about crickets being good luck, I bought a wooden cricket cage and tried to keep one of our local crickets indoors. It had no trouble squeezing out sideways and into my bedroom. I was sadly mistaken about the container and gave up the idea.

Cicadas, which stretch from mid-Michigan to the bottom of Florida, in one breed or another, trill throughout the summer, as well as grasshoppers, which have always reminded me of hot Augusts up north at our trailer in Kalkaska.

Honey bees were admired and left alone, but I was afraid of bumblebees.

One summer afternoon, while mowing the lawn, I felt something buzz against my thigh underneath my jeans. After a moment, the buzzing and movement increased. Yikers! I let go of the mower handle and started slapping at my leg, hoping to knock free whatever had attacked me. My daughter walked into the backyard to ask me something, and stood, puzzled, at my awkward jig. A moment later, a stunned yellowjacket landed on the ground, shook itself, and flew away.

“I wondered what you were doing,” Anne said, neither alarmed at the enormous bee nor surprised at my impromptu dance.

At a house in Roseville, again preparing to mow the lawn, I started to slide open the shed door when I realized that the shed vibrated and hummed. The interior was filled with bumblebees. I slammed closed the door and called a pest control company. The rep came out with a smoker.

"They're protected by law," he said. "I'll smoke them, find the queen, and remove her. We'll make sure she can begin another hive, and when these bees wake up, they'll leave to find her or another queen."

I regret to this day I didn't see the stream of bumblebees depart, and when I looked later, every bee was gone.

Yellow jackets, ground-nesting wasps, were never welcome, although they joined every backyard picnic drawn by grilled meat and sweets, and love cider mills. I ran over the opening of a nest once mowing the lawn. As I made a second pass around the area, I noticed a line of bee-like insects. Seconds later, I recognized the sound and attack, and took off, leaving the lawn for later. If annoyed too much, they’d chase with a determination to sting repeatedly. Nasty little buggers, pun intended.

And yes, where I live in Florida, they’re plentiful and have claimed areas of the yard until deterred by poisonous means.

Florida claims about twenty kinds of ants, while Michigan has at least 113, but I’ll trade the fire ants down here any time. As aggressive as yellow jackets, they swarm and sting at one time when disturbed as if they can communicate. Nasty bites, too, that swell and itch unbearably.

Sub-tropical or semi-scrub Florida offers more than 12,500 bugs, but one species had to arrive from another planet.

I was returning to the elementary school from a walk during my lunch break when I looked down at my feet. Ambling beside me was a tiny brown alien creature. Yes, it had six legs and antennae, but it also beady eyes and claws and an armored head. I hurried inside to inform my sister that I’d seen a small brown alien with six legs.

“Mole cricket,” Janet said, calmly.

“What? I know what a cricket looks like. I tell you, this was an alien.”

“Look it up,” she said.

I dare you. Look it up and see if I wasn’t right.

Not too long afterward, I had dinner in a Brooksville diner when I looked down at the wooden floor.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” the waitress said. She grabbed a broom and swept the mole cricket out the door. “It keeps coming back in. We see it all the time.

I’m not sorry to miss seeing those.

I don’t miss boxelder bugs or June bugs or mayflies, which I innocently thought were the gnats that swarmed around lakes…until I lived, for a time, on the East side when all outside lights were turned off, even on grocery stores, people hosed down their houses if they lived near Lake Erie, drivers slid on their bodies like an icy road, and they clung to anything that stopped their flight. If you squished one, you’d also smell like dead fish, and they were the size of dragonflies, soft, soggy, yellowish dragonflies.

Maybe mole crickets aren’t so bad.

Which bug is the bane of your life?