I know that my inability to touch or be touched by a bug is irrational, and when my daughter first began showing an interest in the world around her I vowed that I would never let her see me behave like a ninny around a bug. With one exception (we were unexpectedly dive-bombed by a very large, drunken dragonfly), I have kept this vow. This means that, in the past few years, there are occasions in which I have had to touch a bug, or let a bug touch me.
Now that we are most of the way through the summer, life is pretty good if you're a bug. All the summer regulars, like the crickets and the cicadas, indulge in noisy all-night orgies of bug-making, and their exhausted bodies litter my porch and sidewalk in the morning. To my great surprise, I have found myself picking up these big monsters and moving them out of the way, without benefit of glass and cardboard. I have gently held, for my daughter's benefit, wasps, grasshoppers, crickets and a praying mantis.
I can now imagine touching something like a stag beetle without experiencing too much angst. I don't know if I could actually do it, but I can imagine it. In evaluating my progress, I realized that I have put myself through a course of treatment psychologists call systematic desensitization. I started small, with ladybugs and fireflies, and worked my way up to the challenging beetles and cicadas. I first imagined touching them, and then, when given the opportunity, gave it a shot in real life.
I am not completely cured. Like I said, I think I could pick up a stag beetle, but I'm not sure. And then there's this, which will always be a huge problem for me:
Brrrr!
Despite all my efforts, my daughter is also becoming bug-averse. I don't know if she's picking this up from friends or teachers at school, or if bug phobia is something innate that some people manage to overcome while others don't. Looking for a while at that picture of Mr. Roach up there, I'm inclined to believe that there's something prewired in my brain that prevents me from appreciating how handsome he is. Whether or not my daughter is able to put "entomologist" down on the list of things she'd like to be some day is rather beside my point, however. I just wonder: Will she ever appreciate how hard it was for me to hold a bug? Will she ever realize that I did it just for her?
If you have a moment, check out What's That Bug? It's a great site, with beautiful photos.
12 comments:
I have similar problems with bugs (though not ladybugs or those little roly-poly bugs that close up into a ball when you touch them.)
But I also try not to freak out in front of my son. My mom has a true snake phobia and my sister and rats&mice don't get along.
Between the three of us, we can only go see the Indiana Jones movies two at a time.
Earlier this week there was a praying mantis on the door of the coffeeshop where my husband and I were hanging out...it was seriously a good six inches long (maybe they're all like that, I've never seen one in the wild before!). It was HUGE. But it was pretty amazing to go look at, too (it was on the outside of a glass door, so I could stay safely inside and study it). I admire people who can see the beauty in bugs - I can't always achieve that! Sounds like you're doing well to me!
Praying mantises (I don't know how to pluralize that noun) get big. The one I showed to my daughter was a mere hatchling, a tiny thing only about an inch long. I once had a friend who kept a praying mantis in his home. He let it run about at will and fed it hamburger every few days. It got enormous. The last time I saw it it was around 6".
Oh lord - he fed it hamburger??
Actually, that sounds strangely fascinating. But I still think I'll pass on having the mantis roam around my home... :-)
Well, they are carnivores, after all.
Heh, your daughter probably will appreciate it. I remember that it was when I was about 12 or 13 that I realized my mom was afraid of deep water and heights, and yet I remembered all the times she'd taken me swimming or hiking, and I was pretty impressed.
And if she doesn't figure it out then, she'll figure it out if she has kids of her own, and has to pretend not to be afraid of something ;)
When I was a kid I loved bugs. I spent the vast majority of my time catching bugs and putting them in my bug enclosures. I had a fancy homeade one, with a door, and all screen mesh so there was lots of air. I 'studied' the bugs, and wantes to be a bug scientist.
Alas, as time progressed my liking for bugs lessened. And now,though I am not fearful of them, I prefer not to have contact with them.
Funny how things change.
I dont know if you were joking or not about not touching the bug pictures... but I do this. No joke.
Fireflies are the only bug that I can think about without cringing. I can even catch them in my hands without freaking out. But when I saw your roach pic, I actually had to scroll up so that it wasnt visible while I read the rest of your post. I'd only seen his kind in the zoo until I moved to the Southwest. Where they get big. Really big. And sometimes they fly.
On that note, must go read something non-bug related now....
Aayor, I really can't touch bug pictures. Well, it's better now, but there's this "extreme bug" book in the kids section of B&N that I can barely look at.
The roach above I also have to scroll away pretty quickly. I believe he is an American roach, and I once lived in an apartment that had an infestation of ARs. They don't invade to the same degree that the little German ones do, but these guys are so big and creepy that the little ones would have been preferable. No one believes me when I say this, but mine were so big that they knocked over a bag of Kingsford charcoal that I had under my sink. Granted the bag was half empty and balanced against the wall, but still.
For reference, I believe the grid Mr. Roach is sitting on is mm graph paper. That makes him, roughly, 4.5cm long, or about 1.5in. The ones in my apartment were bigger, much bigger.
Oh, and by the way, in all roach species, the wings aren't just for show. They do fly. They fly a lot. They will fly around your apartment in the dark.
Arghhh. I've just undone all my therapy.
As the local entomologist, I feel obligated to point out a couple of things. For one, while most Americans are terrified of cockroaches, there's nothing to be afraid of: they're scavengers that don't harm humans at all, and as far as I know they've never been linked to the transmission of any human diseases. Now mosquitoes, on the other hand, are an insect to be justifiably terrified of (depending on where you are geographically).
Also, technically speaking, the generic term for all those creepy-crawly things pictured on the website is arthropod or invertebrate. The site includes spiders (phylum Arthropoda, class Arachnida), isopods (e.g., pill bugs; phylum Arthropoda, class Crustacea), and insects (phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta); bugs are actually a specific order of insect (hemipterans - true bugs), so even most insects can't technically be called bugs. The most widely known hemipterans are probably water striders. Hemipterans typically have long piercing mouthparts and feed on either animal or plant fluids; some spread human diseases (e.g., Chagas disease).
I'm ending my entomologist-geek rant now. Sorry.
Thanks, Radagast. I don't think "terror" is the word that describes my phobia. It's more like extreme disgust. Like when someone spits a loogie on the sidewalk: you don't want to see it, you wish it wasn't there, and you certainly aren't going to pick it up with your bare hands. I don't understand why I feel this way toward... uh, invertebrates, especially of the cockroach family.
But just LOOK at Mr. Roach. He has all those nasty little hairy things on his legs, and even on his mouthparts. His abdomen is all segmented in a creepy way. I know that other... uh, invertebrates are put together in exactly this way, and some of them I can actually touch (like grasshoppers and ladybugs), but with Mr. Roach all these buggy... uh, invertebratey characteristics come together in a crescendo of ickiness.
I know this is irrational. It makes no sense at all, from an evolutionary perspective: if times get tough I'm going to have to eat Mr. Roach if I want any hope of making a contribution to the gene pool. I have no idea where this phobia comes from. My father was very careful to teach me respect for the invertebrates around me, and in fact I am quite fond of spiders. (Especially the fuzzy jumping ones.)
Ah, well. If I knew where this fear came from I'd hang out my shrink shingle and cure the world. Meanwhile, we have what is claimed to be a world-class "bug zoo" next door, and I already contacted the faculty member in charge to arrange a tour for me and my daughter. I don't know if I'll ever find the time, somehow, to get over there.
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