Bugs are a difficult ethic for me. My first, closest friend wanted to be "an entomologist" at age 6. I was always squeamish and was known to run shaking and screaming from a winged thing on my arm. I was very close to a girl whose greatest daring was in relation to bugs. She braved a scorpion on her face and grew moths in a jar.

In the shower a six-legged Daddy was vibrating its damp legs helplessly. I blew air across its back and it froze. I blew again and it didn't move.

What to do? I thought. Leave it alone. Living is its own business. But I went back and squeezed its back legs between my fingers—it spangled like I would have if it had landed on me, and not me on it. I could feel it wriggling against my two fingers. I brought it in here and it lies still—tired? dead?—on my sleek black notebook.