My childhood obsession with insects provided me with endless entertainment as I roamed my parents’ field at our home in New Hampshire, determined to get to know each six-legged creature personally. I have spent, some would say, an inordinate amount of time watching ants, caterpillars, and beetles in their comings and goings. I’m fascinated by the insects’ combination of seemingly hapless wandering with an air of purposefulness. Unlike us humans, my insect friends are unbothered by zigzags and deviations in their paths from here to there. Needless to say I was delighted when I saw my own children personifying the crickets, grasshoppers, and caterpillars in our backyard. And like myself, my kids were drawn to pondering the mysterious ways of the insects, who scurry this way and that with purposefulness and determination.
