Ode to the Lowly Bug (and other Creepy-Crawlies). by Dan

Anyone who knows Joy well knows of her, well, terror, of all of God's creatures that come in small forms with multiple legs or tentacles. An ample illustration: it was only a couple weeks ago, when visiting the in-laws, that one of these fine specimens to the right (the "house centipede", otherwise known as Scutigera Coleoptrata) was found to be crawling up the fireplace stone, and Joy gave me that look that said "Please, Dan, do something." I may be brave, but I'm not stupid, so after sheathing my entire hand in 18 layers of paper towel, I went at the dirty task. Meanwhile, Joy hopped back and forth on top of the sofa making gagging noises (not, mind you, for special effect, but simply as an involuntary physiological response). Overheard while this whole debacle took place was the sound of Joy's dad walking into the room, sizing up the situation, and then asking Joy, "Is Dan slaying the dragon for you?"

And so, I thought, it would be fun to catalogue a few of the critters Joy has encountered in her two seasons of gardening. Each has provoked a response from Joy that, while varying in intensity, has always been humorous, and nearly always involved some sort of involuntary guttoral noise.


1) To begin with, there is the ubiquitous cucumber beetle. Kinda cute, but very annoying. Found anywhere where we have squash, pumpkins or zucchini - they chew through the leaves and, if we aren't on top of the situation, can kill the whole plot. After a failed experiment in 100% organic gardening where I attempted to vacuum them all up via the reverse setting on my leaf blower (after vacuuming every dang leaf in the entire garden, I had only captured about 3 bugs...) we have made our peace with the non-organic white powder you can buy in the stores. It kills them. We like that.

2) A very alarming find last year was this little lady, hiding in amongst the tomato plants. Argiope Aurantia, or the Yellow Garden Spider. If looks could kill, every mammal that ever dared set foot in our garden would be dead, with a look of dread forever frozen in place on their remaining corpse. Fortunately, these beauties are harmless (to us anyway. We've seen many a fly, however, spun into a quivering cocoon of terror by one of these no-nonsense ladies, to be set aside for a midnight snack). Needless to say, Joy still kept her distance.

3) Believe it or not, but the lowly earthworm, or Lumbricus Terrestris, is perhaps Joy's greatest nemesis of all. Incredibly useful for keeping soil healthy, they nonetheless fill Joy with an impending sense of doom, and recall to her memory an incident forever known as The Night of the Emergent Earthworms. Ask Joy for the "juicy" details (pun intended) on that one....

4) This year, we saw the arrival of the Squash Bug, or Anasa Tristis. Not even having the benefit of being pretty to look at, these fellas, if left unchecked, devour squash and pumpkin leaves even faster than their friends the cucumber beetles. At times, we had leaves that were gray, being completely covered by these munching maniacs. Fortunately, the Magic White Powder kills them, too.

5) I can't count the number of times that I have assured Joy that we do not have slugs in SW Minnesota. This year, I was proven wrong. They're small, and cute, and don't seem to have done any real damage. But they were unmistakably there.

6) Okay, this one was a false alarm. Attempting to discern why our squash vines were shriveling, Joy was absolutely convinced it was due to these lovely grubs, the Squash Vine Borer. Now, do understand that once they have taken hold, the only way to save your plant is by hand: to take a knife to the vine, cut it open, and extract the squirming larvae with your own fingers. Also understand that Joy was to have no part of this. So off Dan was sent to save the crop, knife in hand. After slitting open vine after vine, only to find nothing, I noticed instead the presence of some eggs of the aforementioned Squash Bugs. Out came the Magic White Powder. Case Closed.

7) Finally, this year a few of our pumpkins were found to have small holes burrowed into their rinds. In a couple cases, the telltale culprit was found wriggling away inside. This critter has yet to be firmly identified, but as of now we suspect the nefarious Melon Worm. Fortunately, we've only lost a few gourds to these varmints, so the damage has been contained.

The good news in all of this is that, we do live in Minnesota, where the winter freeze kills off all but the most hardy (read: small) of insects and critters. Imagine Joy's reaction instead if we were living in Borneo and stumbled across one of these critters in the garden....