About a month ago, I was poking around my crawlspace when I noticed a lot of dark crickets jumping around like popcorn as soon as I got close to them. Wondering whether they were harmful, I looked online and found out that they were called camel crickets (but also sometimes known as cave crickets), and completely harmless. They like dark damp spaces, eat detritus, and are completely silent, so you won’t hear them chirping at night. The little things looked so cute, the 5 year old in me thought about raising a few in a cage so I could observe them.

Then last week, I was in a used bookstore and I came upon this book through pure luck. A cursory glance through the contents revealed that each chapter is about a different insect, from much loved ones like the butterfly and the ladybug, to ones we consider pests like gnats, silverfish, and flies. I put it in my huge pile of finds that day and took it to the checkout counter. It wasn’t until later that I saw the title of the last chapter—Order Orthoptera: Camel Crickets.

I read this book in random impulsive order. One of the first chapters I read was of course the one on camel crickets. I found out so much more about these little critters than Wikipedia could ever be able to tell me. Hubbell writes from a personal angle; she is not an entomologist, (though she is very knowledgeable) just someone who’s very enthusiastic about bugs, so I was able to get that same sense of excitement and discovery that she did.

She presents you with amazing tidbits that never feel dry. For example, did you know that insects have green blood because their blood (unlike ours) does not have hemoglobin? They have a system of tubes that carries oxygen throughout their small bodies so that their blood doesn't need to do that for them.

Did you know there are water striders (those insects that skim the surface of ponds) that live in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans?

Her approach with each insect is different. With the ladybug, she followed ladybug harvesters (because they sell them now for people who want them in their gardens), for the daddy longlegs and camel crickets, she raised some of her own in cages and observed them, for the butterfly, she followed a few taxonomists, helping them count the different varieties in the Beartooth Mountains.

Often, each insect is like a launching pad into other subjects. In "Katydids" she talks about insect size as a theoretical question. In "Dragonflies" she talks about people's revulsion to insects in general, and their fear of different-ness. In "Syrphid Flies" she talks about mimicry. In "Black Flies" she talks about our human-centric view of bugs (did you know that the official definition of "endangered species" does not cover insects that can be viewed as pests?) and the dangers of chemical pesticides. In "Gypsy Moths" she talks about the effects of humans introducing a new species from a different continent.

At the end of the book, what struck me most was not all the things I now know about bugs that I didn't before. What struck me most was all the things we as a human race still DON'T know about even the most common bugs! At the end of the chapter on Daddy Longlegs, she lists 3 full pages of questions (most of them very basic) that we still don't understand about these very common insects. And throughout the rest of the book, she is quick to note the many areas that we are still in the dark about. One of the reasons she cites is the lack of funding--especially for insects that don't directly benefit or harm us humans.

We're such selfish creatures ( )

This is my favorite of Sue Hubbell's books. Anyone interested in the lives of insects from a layperson's point of view will enjoy it. Each chapter covers a different insect: dragonflies, crickets, moths, and more. ( )

She writes so well! A joy to read. ( )

Delightful meditations on the creepie-crawlies, winged things, and those which transmogrify -they've more biomass than we do by orders of magnitude.