Bug stories

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My favorite bug story:

My parents live in a house in the suburbs of Washington, DC. In the back yard, there's a beautiful, old-growth maple tree. My mother loves it.

Now, when I was maybe three years old, the 13-year locusts hatched, and our entire neighborhood was full of them. I don't know how widespread they are geographically, but if you have never seen this phenomenon, it is important to know that they are everywhere -- meaning that this huge tree in our backyard was completely covered with locusts.

My mom was worried that the locusts would destroy the bark and kill the tree, so she ran outside with a bucket filled with some kind of poison and started picking the locusts off the tree and dropping them in the bucket as fast as she could, working her way around the circumference of the tree.

When she got to the opposite side of the tree, though, she ran into the competition -- a large raccoon that was working his way around the tree in the opposite direction, picking up the locusts and popping them in his mouth.

Both the raccoon and my mom shrieked and ran away in opposite directions.