At a party this past Halloween weekend, I was talking to a group of bedbugs. Actually it was really people cleverly costumed as bedbugs. Our conversation naturally drifted to the topic of bugs of all sorts, and that brought me back to my early days.
"My favorite insect is the doodlebug," I recalled to one of the bedbugs. The relationship between the bug and me developed when I was in grade school. Each morning I waited at the corner for the school bus to arrive. The neighbor at the corner house had planted a row of hedges that was a doodlebug metropolis.
It was easy to be become fascinated by the doodlebugs because they were so different. They were neither leggy like a spider nor slimy like a snail. Instead they came prepackaged in their own shell. Sometimes they would crawl good-naturedly along my hand and other times they just seemed tired and would cuddle into a ball. They had the extra attraction of not stinging, biting or performing any other misdeeds. Nor were they predators at war with other insects. A good meal for them was decaying vegetation, which they found plenty of beneath the hedges.
I didn’t know back then in those pre-Wikipedean days that the scientific name of the bugs is Armadillidum vulgare, which makes sense because the armored bugs do look something like an armadillo, though much cuter, but I am not sure where the vulgare came from except possibly from some ancient Roman who found a doodlebug in his fig. Nor did I know that in some parts of the country the doodlebug is known as a pillbug, which makes me think that someone once made a terrible mistake when taking his medications.
Once I started going to high school my doodlebug days were over. There were no more school bus rides, no waiting at the corner, no discovering the world that only little boys can see.
I never harmed a doodlebug. To the contrary, I had great ambitions for them. My plan was to launch the first doodlebug in space. One day, I told myself, I would put a doodlebug in a matchbox, attach the box to a helium balloon and send it soaring to the sky. Maybe the capsule would even reach the moon, where its passenger could take one giant step for doodlebugs.
Those ambitions were never realized. Times changed. My world changed.
I wonder though, do doodlebugs still exist in great numbers or have they, like the lightening bug, disappeared as collateral damage of insecticides? Also, did any of you have a favorite bug?
Where they survive, doodlebugs are no doubt content just being in the earth munching away on fallen leaves. Like us, sometimes they face threats. When that happens, wouldn’t it be nice to hurriedly roll into a ball until the storm passes?
EW: SEE ERROL LABORDE’S MARDI GRAS VIDEO HERE.
Krewe: The Early New Orleans Carnival- Comus to Zulu by Errol Laborde is available at all area bookstores. Books can also be ordered via e-mail at gdkrewe@aol.com or (504) 895-2266)
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