Bugs and us
Here in Louisiana we have the skinny on bugs. Danielle at Zumba was describing the first time she moved here from the midwest and encountered a flying cockroach (she ended up staying in her car till someone came and got it out). I remember the first time Steve flew in to rent an apartment for us in 1995 and when I arrived, I opened the door, the handle fell off, and a flying cockroach buzzed by me. Welcome home.
I was out on the porch this evening star and planet gazing – the night sky is wonderful these past few nights. As I sat there, a Landcruiser was about to turn the bend when it slammed on the brakes and three women got out screaming at the top of their lungs. A bug. When they finally got back in, one of them kept saying, “I hate bugs!”
Danielle had said she went to Zimbabwe and encountered a spider the size of her fist. Her host family said, “It’s fine, it’s good because it eats bugs.”
You can’t hate bugs if you live here, you have to coexist with them. Some are good bugs and some are bad bugs, but who really knows the difference. It reminded me of earlier today when I was in the backyard looking at all the oxalis sprouting everywhere. I had read about someone who went away to meditate on a retreat and came back with no sense of weeds or flowers, believing all of them had a reason to be here.
And so it is with bugs.