Is Nicole Kidman Buzzing Around Your House?

Whenever I get bored with network TV talk shows about Britney’s and J- Lo’s latest 12-second meaningful relationships, or reality shows about monster truck drivers having facelifts on a cumquat-infested island, I switch over to cable for my favorite brain stimulation—Discovery.

Here you can learn that Evel Knievel has broken every major bone in his body (honest—it was even a Jeopardy question). Or that the alligator can move both its top and bottom jaws independently, just like that guy in front of you in the all-you-can-eat buffet line.

So last week I was glued to a special on insects. First of all, I learned that insects have the capability to someday dominate the earth—probably because they don’t spend their time watching specials about humans on Discovery. Given just a few billion more years, when Jerry Springer’s guests have become the highest human life form left on the planet, it’s conceivable that huge roving gangs of delinquent insects on skateboards will infest every city in the world in wave after wave of drive-by stingings, and that will be the last of us. Bummer.

The reason, apparently, is that there are trillions and trillions and trillions of incredibly ugly insects, way more than the number of incredibly ugly humans, so no matter how many fly swatters you buy, you just can’t win.

I actually happen to know that’s true, because except for a couple of centipedes and a stink bug that are currently stuck in Fargo, North Dakota, all the rest have congregated at my house. I really don’t know why this is, it just is. I’m no tastier then anyone else in town. There’s no big party at my place. No gourmet bug-burgers on the grill, no big pitcher of Jose Cuervo mosquito margaritas chilling on the patio table, nothing. Yet they all come over anyway. I guess it beats Fargo.

Moths in particular like my place. Must be the quality of the light coming from my particular back porch fixture. I can flip that light on about dusk, and watch it steadily dim as layer after layer of moths build up. By the time the brown cloud hovering ecstatically around my $9.99 Home Depot special has reached three feet in thickness, the light is completely gone. Which always makes me wonder what moth layer number 1,370 is even attracted to.

At that point, it’s fun to go inside and shut the light. About 632 pounds of moths drop immediately to the ground in fluttering heap, lie there for a minute, then go off and roost wherever it is that moths roost, and wait for the light to come on again. Knowing that this group is part of what’s going to boot us off the planet kinda makes you think twice about all those hours of TV you watch, doesn’t it?

The most fascinating thing I learned on that program is that many insects have the ability to change their appearance. So you have to wonder—if that’s true, why does every insect choose to squander that amazing talent in an all-out effort to look like insects?

I figured that at least one had to be smarter then that, so after the program ended I spent two solid weeks studying every insect I could find, looking for the smart ones that had decided to change their appearance to look like either Nicole Kidman or Charleze Theron. Nothing! I mean really, if you had that ability, would you choose to expend a massive amount of energy just to look like an earwig?

In the end, all I found were three that looked amazingly like Richard Nixon. But I think that may have just been a coincidence.