Beetlemania

June 1998

Although I am surely no expert on buggery—actually, I think that’s entomology—I have had a lot of experience with June Bugs, no matter that they were all crammed into those carefree years between four and twelve.

Annually appearing in—yes, you guessed it—June, they glutted the Charleston air, buzzing like emasculated bees around our heads, occasionally knocking themselves goofy in the process.

June Bugs, of the family Melolonthidae, or June Beetles, or fin gators, as my mother used to call them, were everywhere in those days.

Just in case you may not know, or even care, what I’m talking about, June Bugs are inch-long beetle-like bugs with hard greenish shells, iridescent, horizontally strated stomachs, one set of wings and six legs. They, in fact, look a great deal like dung beetles who have shed their campy horns and cleaned up their acts—literally. They are totally harmless, though of course, in those days girls were terrified of them (or at least pretended to be for traditional purposes), and if you were quick enough to pick one up while it was recovering from its immovable object-induct stupor, all it would do was just crawl up your arm. They, for that matter, never seemed in a hurry to resume their airborne status, perhaps eventually associating it with pain, discomfort, and disorientation, or making a common sense decision that is obviously a lot safer to simply walk.

Although in human retrospect, I realize that these minute entities undoubtedly have a divinely programmed purpose, the general consensus in those days was that they were here for the personal enjoyment of us humans. And that enjoyment, as the tradition was passed down from one sadistic generation to the next, came from tying a string around one of the helpless bug’s legs and letting him try to fly away, giving the triumphant holder a sort of one inch living dive bomber. This somewhat macabre pastime, no doubt similar to those played by Hitler and Ted Bundy in their youths, could go on for hours, or until one or the other tired, the June Bug smashed into something, or in the most gruesome case scenario, the bug broke free of its fiendish mooring, leaving its tied leg still attached to the string, which floated grotesquely back to earth, while its erstwhile captor planned for a five point landing in a less hostile environment.

I, myself, never indulged in this barbaric recreation; I only observed from a (gutless) viewpoint, as my young friends and relatives reveled in this appalling air show.

I did like to sort of collect them (June Bugs, not relatives and friends) for other ostensibly more humane purposes. But perhaps more importantly, I did always release them once they had done my bidding.

At times, I just kept them in a jar with holes punched in the lid and observed them for a few hours through a pseudo-scientific stare, before letting them fly away, but mostly, since I also collected miniature toy soldiers. (My God, that’s why my brain has been deteriorating faster than Robert Downey Jr.’s—I got lead poisoning from those damned things.) I used the June Bugs in semi-live animated military dioramas.

I would set up my soldiers in a formidable defensive posture and then dump about 40-50 June Bugs on them. It would be “The Invasion of the Giant Killer June Bugs.” The soldiers would be knocked down into the dirt, (I was only allowed to perform my reenactments alfresco) accompanied by self-provided sound effects:

1. “Arrgghh, look out!”
2. “It’s got my head, Sarge!”
3. “Run for your lives, men!”
4. “Oh, my God, it’s eating my liver!”
5. “Brat-a-tat-tat! Look out, Joe! I’ll get him!”
6. “Oh, God have mercy!”
7. “My arm, my arm!”
8. “What arm?”
9. “Call in the artillery!”
10. “Baroom!”

All this ended tragically one day, when I, infused with a sudden rush of creativity, decided to re-enact a naval battle scenario, using my June Bugs as able but oddly shaped seamen. I placed them on some of my wooden battleships and destroyers, floating in a large metal tub, then began my devastating air bombardment of dropping pebbles into the water to effect bomb geysers.

“Eeeyow! Eeeyow!” (propeller-driven aircraft, of course) the battle raged on, with the pebble bombs sending up four inch geysers near the defenseless vessels. The June Bug sailors withstood the withering attack until a pebble inadvertently made a direct hit. No one was crushed by the errant missile, but most regrettably, some were either knocked overboard by the concussion or just decided to abandon ship.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!”

I quickly gathered up the luckily buoyant victims and placed them all on the ground. All but one, the captain, who was distinguished by his superior size and quickly vanishing water-colored-on white sash, began crawling away as fast as their little legs could move.

Realizing that I may have even transcended the inhumanity of ripping off a Melolonthidaeic leg, I made a redeeming attempt by trying something I had seen in the movies: artificial resuscitation.

No, I didn’t try mouth to mandible, but wrongly surmising that June Bugs had lungs just as humans do, I used light finger pressure in hope of discharging some of the life-strangling liquid. Not being aware that this was essentially impossible with an exoskeletal, lungless animal, and seeing no apparent re-effect, I applied a bit more force, with calamitous results.

I will spare a description of the grisly scene, but needless to say, I had not saved my captain’s life. I had, though, ended his suffering, while, of course, simultaneously initiating mine.

Who was I to meddle with Mother Nature? June Bugs, like butterflies, were meant to fly free, not risk their already ephemeral existence in my Little Theatre of the Obtuse. Perhaps, I could justify the involuntary introduction of a cockroach into such a macabre production, but not so harmless a harbinger of springtime as a June Bug. At least, if I had left him a pentapod with a jerk of my sting, he could have escaped, but no, I had to impose my puerile but Demienesque will upon God’s delicate balance.

I never captured any more June Bugs after that life-altering event. In fact, for a few summers, I was a one-man Save-the-June-Bug movement, cutting the strings of unsuspecting fliers (as long as the flier was smaller than I was), flipping stunned bugs right-side-up, pulling them out of perilous puddles, even extricating them from the web-draped parlors of spiders.

With the gradual lifting of the onerous boulder of contribution from my weary soul, I eventually returned to my normal pre-adolescent life, such as it was.

Sometimes I reminisce about my days as a producer-director of June Bugs Productions and torment myself not only with vestige of guilt, but with the searing question, “Had it not been for the tragic backyard naval disaster, would I have been called up on the stage last March at the Academy Awards Ceremony?”

“And the winner for directing in the category of short subject films with an all bug/insect cast is Bob Coskrey for ‘Beetlemania’!”