The bugs are back.
With the return of warmth, the valley’s green life has replenished the forest’s pantry, and now the air pulses with wings and legs. Flies hover. Bees lumber from blossom to blossom. Wasps patrol with deadly precision. Butterflies drift like fallen petals caught in updrafts. Moths emerge at dusk, their wings soft as dust. Crickets tune their instruments for evening concerts. Ant columns march with silent determination. Gnat clouds hang in golden evening light. Caterpillars inch along leaf edges, measuring the world one body length at a time. Beetles, in their hundreds of forms, scuttle through leaf litter—each species a unique solution to the riddle of survival.
Let your eyes rest on any outdoor surface, and miniature dramas unfold. A solitary ant, having strayed from its colony, darts across patio stones in quick, nervous bursts—pausing, testing the air, avoiding the notice of watchful wolf spiders and hungry sparrows. Carpenter bees, heavy-bodied and glossy black, clash over the perfectly round holes drilled in wooden eaves. Their bodies collide midair with angry vibrations, tumbling to the ground in wrestling matches of wings and legs. Cabbage whites and swallowtails float between flowers not already claimed by industrious bumblebees. Ground beetles scurry for cover when shadows fall, instinctively aware that a hard shell offers only partial protection in a world of beaks and claws.
Sitting on the patio tonight, immersed in this tapestry of life, I recall something I once read: that trees are the planet’s true owners. That an honest accounting of Earth would describe it primarily as home to plants, bacteria, and fungi.
Curious, I check the numbers on my phone. The Internet tells me that plants account for over 81% of all living matter on Earth. Bacteria follow at 12%. The remaining 7% is divided between fungi at 2% and a mix of other life forms. Animals make up less than half of one percent. And to humble us further: half of all animal biomass consists of insects. Humans account for only about 3% of that sliver—less than 0.02% of all life on Earth.
This sparks a quiet awe. First, at how vastly we overestimate our significance on a planet we share with more ancient, more numerous life forms. We build cities and monuments, write histories and laws, yet remain only a whisper in the greater chorus of existence. Second—what a sacred miracle it is to be human. How rare, to have a brain and body like ours amid this vast sea of greenery and microbial life. What a gift it is to witness the world—to exist, even briefly, as the universe’s way of seeing itself.
At that moment, a gnat—perhaps a whole family of them—takes my moment of reflection as an invitation to explore my left ear canal. They buzz and tickle inside. Maddening.
There’s little I can do. My arms and hands are now too weak to obey that ancient evolutionary command shared by all mammals: Get the damn bugs off.
I face a choice—retreat inside, navigate the wheelchair to the kitchen, struggle to prop my hands on the table and crane my neck to reach my ear, or simply let the bugs stay.
Tonight, I choose the latter.
So, with an earful of gnats, I marvel at the sunlight and the impossible green of the trees against the equally impossible blue of the sky. I watch as light drains away like a tide—first pooling in amber patches on the lawn, then fading behind the trees until night empties it completely.
I breathe in the sweetness of honeysuckle and rambling rose carried on the breeze.
Somewhere, a red-breasted woodpecker calls once more before bats drop from their hiding places and glide over the yard and into the woods—a miracle of night on leathery wings.