When Calvin asks little Susie if being a girl is kind of like being a bug, that it must be something like having just enough intelligence to understand nature has played a cruel trick on it but not enough to understand it she quite naturally knocks Calvin into the school lockers. As he lies there seeing stars he says to himself, “I must have put my finger on it.”

But when I read of a young woman telling a particularly obnoxious man making unwanted advances “I don’t date outside of my species” she may have been on to something. There is no want of obnoxious men thinking they are God’s gift to women, but perhaps the storyline of “Men in Black” anticipated the recent announcement about the age of bugs on our planet, and the young woman recognized the obnoxious man as a “bug;” though “Young Frankenstein” did make the comment alluding some men might be considered “worms.” He was probably aware of Psalm 22:6: But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Henry Thoreau was well aware of intestinal worms, and mentioned these inhabiting our bodies, that while we may be healthy we are not pure. Not surprisingly, these worms well known to me as a boy are getting some play in the news now, associating them with the poorer classes. We may not have been that poor when I was a boy, but the worms were there; made the more prevalent during WWII when meat was rationed and hygiene and diet often took a back seat to necessity.

Worms aside, scientists now believe beetles may be 300 million years old; so I have to give both little Susie and that young woman credit for their powers of discernment. From the journal Science: “Today, 350,000 species of beetles dot collections around the world, and millions more are estimated to exist but haven’t been discovered — which means they make up more than one-fourth of all known species of life forms. The reason for this tremendous diversity has been debated by scientists for many years but never resolved.”

Given a few hundred million years to evolve, one might credit the idea of that young woman and the film Men in Black with some possibility; not all such life forms may have hewed the line and when some woman refers to a man as an “insect” she might be correct; and allowance should be made for not a few women thinking some men being worms and insects. I recall Gerry Trudeau having Patty Hearst refer to her ex-boyfriend by the term “Insect.” How many a knight in shining armor has proven to be nothing but a bug in disguise.

Fancy aside, some have thought it odd that Thoreau would conclude “Walden” with the story of a bug chewing its way out of a farmer’s table, suggesting the egg may have been deposited in the original tree from which the table had been made some sixty years previously. But Henry was using this as an example not only of our hope of immortality, but suggesting that perhaps there might yet come from some unknown seeming trivial source a “beautiful and winged life” giving hope for humankind. The problem with Henry was his ego, and one can be excused for believing he thought he was an example of this future beautiful species and this was the reason he chose this story to conclude his book notwithstanding his being aware of the stories crediting the longevity of beetles and the high esteem in which some cultures held them.

“Of Bugs and Men” would not have made for a catchy title like “Of Mice and Men,” but the Egyptian Scarab is well known to have been a symbol of immortality, and given a prominent place among the ancient Egyptians as well as other past civilizations. And it is truly amazing the kinds of life that can survive under extremely adverse circumstances; from the ocean depths, hot springs, and arid deserts, even in ice packs and the freezing conditions of the Arctic Ocean you will find various life forms. The punch line in “Jurassic Park” was “Life will find a way,” and so it would seem.

Beelzebub, the Hebrew literally “Lord of Flies” a name accorded Satan, often synonymous with Ba’al of the Philistines is not without foundation in the most pejorative sense. Construed as an unclean thing, the doctrine of Satan came to include insects and serpents, especially those that are venomous. But the scarab continued to hold a very special place in many cultures as a symbol of immortality despite it being a “dung beetle;” the emphasis was upon its survivability, not its feeding habits. In some ways, this compares with the survivability of Satan as a god. And despite the uncleanness of Satan and demons, their association with evil, these still find worshippers.

Now, given the early appearance of beetles as life forms predating even the dinosaurs I’m given to speculation why this should be the case? And like scientists, I also wonder why such diversity? Certainly I associate this with satanic creations, a malevolent mind given to literally diabolical creations like the dinosaurs. And I wonder; could butterflies and hummingbirds be the creations of better gods spitting in the eyes of the Evil One and his demons, just as with orchids vs. foxtails?

The Warden in “The Mummy” says “I hate bugs!” Those Egyptian Scarabs certainly play a prominent part in the film and its sequel. But despite his hating bugs when the Warden finds what he believes to be scarabs of gold mounted in stone and starts prying them out, ah, this proved his undoing; there must be a moral to that, something of “It may be unclean and I may hate it, but make it of gold and…”

While the association of beetles with immortality has a basis in earliest history, most of us react to bugs much the way of the Warden in the film. Men in Black capitalized on this natural abhorrence most of us have to bugs, and despite their prominent place in the scheme of Nature, a “bug” made the consummate villain in the film, though a bug thanked K for not stepping on it in the sequel. So, there are good bugs and bad bugs, but then we all know that.

However, if our species should do itself in we can probably count on bugs surviving be they good or bad bugs. Survivability is key to life; but I wouldn’t want to be around to see the result of a world of either giant beetles or cockroaches. Still, there is to my mind the possibility of some truth to that young woman’s observation of not dating outside her species, and I do believe there are monsters among us in human guise, the satanic and diabolical monsters that prey on women and children.

We depend on honey bees and other beneficial insects, but despite this and our mortal bodies being food for worms I wouldn’t want to be found lower on the food chain while alive than bugs of any kind. There may yet be some beautiful and winged life yet to come, life better than what we mortals have thus far seen. While I share this hope of Henry, the odds seem to favor huge beetles or cockroaches. But my hope remains in an afterlife where there is nothing unclean, no monsters in human guise and no men that can be described as either insects or worms.