Goin' Buggy

Staghorn beetle

It's summer and the bugs are out! The Welsh word for ghost or specter is bwg, from which come bugaboo, bugbear and bogy as well as our garden bug. Technically only insects of the order Heminoptera (beetles) are bugs but we lay people often call any insect that crawls or flies a bug. Some beetles like the staghorn beetle really are rather hideous and earn their similarity to a specter. Others like the ladybug (or ladybird beetle in England) are quite friendly-looking and beneficial to gardeners. The ladybug is not a true beetle since it is a member of the order Coleoptera. It was named in honor of Our Lady, the mother of Jesus. In early paintings Mary was often depicted wearing a red robe and the seven spots of the most common ladybug in Europe symbolized the seven joys and seven sorrows of Mary.

A common phrase in the South is "cute as a bug's ear". Since bugs don't have ears it's hard to see the origin of this expression. One idea is that the phrase was originally "acute as a bug's ear", meaning shrewd or sharp. But bugs still don't have ears and they don't seem to respond quickly to sound. Another might be that the smaller something is the cuter it is, so a non-existent bug's ear could be considered very cute! Not very satisfactory speculations!

In the 17th century a doodle was a simpleton. In the 18th century it evolved into "doodlebug", presumably because bugs aren't very bright. Now there are lots of things called doodlebugs. The doodlebug is the larval stage of the ant lion. The adult ant lion looks a bit like a dragonfly (now there's a lovely name!), but the larva digs a pit and lurks at the bottom under the sand to eat any luckless ant or insect that falls in. This doodlebug gets its name from the strange wandering tracks it leaves before digging its pit. A pill bug or rolypoly is also sometimes called a doodlebug. A self-propelled rail car is sometimes called a doodlebug perhaps because it can wander the tracks. In World War II a German drone bomb was called a doodlebug from the sound of its engines that would propel the bomb until it ran out of fuel then it would stop doodling and drop to the ground and explode. "Doodlebug" is also a term of endearment (see the Doodlebug Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiIlvnSLdCo) and another word for a dousing rod. It also refers to small homemade tractors used by civilians in the U.S. during World War II when tractors were in short supply. The list goes on.  Why can't something that started as a simpleton be simple?

Another bug that isn't a bug at all is a litterbug. Mark Twain wrote "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot." Only people can be litterbugs. The term was first used in 1945. Since gardeners don't like most bugs it is appropriate that garden clubs were first to use the slogan "Don't be a litterbug!"  In 1962 a Donald Duck cartoon about litterbugs came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsOK1Gc-or8 

Finally bugs can be germs or viruses, even those that infect your computer programs. We refer to tiny surreptitiously-placed microphones as bugs. These seem much closer to the original Welsh bwg! Is it any wonder we seem to be going buggy today?

PS Here's a cute children's song about going buggy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0xJPIwXdkk