At the Museum of Science in Boston, the last time I was there, they had a display of cockroaches, big ones. (Similar to the display pictured here, which is from the London Zoo.) Even though the buggies were behind plastic, I felt an urgent need to get out of there as fast possible.

My phobia of bugs (except for spiders, which don’t bother me much at all, except that I don’t want to get bitten)… My fear of bugs might stem from my childhood. I spent most of my growing years living in an old, yellow house on the side of a hill. A lot of pleasant memories are attached to that house, and a few creepy ones. Each year, for example, we were attacked by a hoard of ants of various sizes. Mostly, we saw the normal, black, carpenter ants, which I learned to live with and to kill on sight. We set down ant traps sometimes, in a never-ending struggle against these tiny invaders.

But we also got other kinds of ants from time to time, too. On one occasion, I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard and poured myself a bowl. The cereal was laced with hundreds (or maybe thousands) of tiny, brown-black ants only a millimeter or two long— I don’t know what kind they were, and I never want to see them again. (Fortunately, I can still eat cereal, but I’m religious about wrapping up the bag and closing the box securely when I put it away.)

Jim “Suldog” Sullivan’s tale of The Ant & the Dishwasher reminded me of this and a couple more of my own. And unlike Jim, I do not hate to kill insect. (Shudder.)