The big value of the tiny things that crawl

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. You always felt they outnumbered you. They were determined and resilient in a way you felt you were not.

They were blindingly fast, hiding in places you couldn’t find, and they sprang at you when you were least prepared. Despite their small size, they presented seemingly insurmountable problems. Sometimes, a single one was enough to give you nightmares.

They wiggled their antennae at you in a way that felt exceedingly personal—like the cockroach on your kitchen floor stood for the enmity of all cockroaches ever. They found the chinks in our armour (and our home’s armour) to face us when we least expected it. In short, insects can be a map of our vulnerabilities—interrupting hard-won sleep or midnight trips to the loo with giant tremors of discomfort.

And yet, what if I were to tell you that despite our conditioning, and our inherent fear of things that crawl rather than walk, insects are so much more than pests? This is the time of the year that our gardens and lakes are alive with wings. Butterflies flutter through lawns on their own time, dipping, swerving, pirouetting, like falling-pulsing heartbeats drawn on the air. And in wetlands and ponds, dragonflies zoom sternly, their efficiency soldier-like to the butterfly’s whimsy.

If the cockroach was the first insect you screamed at, the dragonfly might well have been the first one you admired. You might have seen the brilliantly scarlet, fat-bodied Ruddy Marsh Skimmer shining in the sun like a piece of stained glass. Or perhaps you saw the slender-bodied Green Marsh Hawk, sunning itself on a clothing line.