Don’t Bug Your Mom

Can there ever really be too much poop? Oh, how I laughed when I met the greedy dung beetle of Frank Weber’s More Dung! A Beetle Tale (opens in a new window). As the beetle goes from gratitude to greed to disaster to a return to contentment, reading about his journey offered loads to think about and brought a new dimension to our conversations about bugs. 

As does Frank Weber (opens in a new window)! Frank is an animator, author, and illustrator based in London but originally hails from South Africa, which inspires his work. It is most excellent to have Frank here to share bug stories of his childhood, which will help you get kids wondering about bugs around the world and drawing a few of their own.

More Dung by Frank Weber

As children we played in an open field opposite our house. This field climbed up to a “koppie,” a rocky hill where we caught all sorts of critters, taking them home to my mom who indulged us, allowing us our wild pets. This meant my poor mother, a neat freak who hates animal hair, not only had to live with several dogs and stray cats, a large tortoise, a hedgehog, and one angora bunny, but also tok-tokkies.

Tok-tokkies, or darkling beetles, are a species of beetle named for the sound they make when tapping their abdomens on the ground. Found throughout Namibia and South Africa, these fascinating insects thump their abdomens to communicate with potential mates. They also do headstands like yoga masters, allowing the morning fog to collect as dew drops on their rotund bodies and drip into their mouths. They can drink 40% of their bodyweight like this every morning.

These insect gurus always struck me as extremely industrious, forever marching across our rocky hillside, scurrying along in straight lines, moving, working, busy, busy, busy. 

Yet of all the critters my mom permitted in her house it wasn’t the tok-tokkies that pushed her over the edge. Nor was it the putrid fish tank in my bedroom, or the chameleon that disappeared only to be found weeks later, blending into the living room curtains. No, the one bit of wilderness she could not live with was a humble shoebox filled with silkworms.

My mom has an irrational fear of worms, a phobia so intense, anything vaguely worm-shaped sends her brain into lock-down. Presented with a sour gummy candy worm, she freezes like a housecat meeting a new dog in the kitchen, stuck in that perfect balance of fight or flight before the explosion of fur and crockery.

I, on the other hand, was fascinated by silkworms’ single-minded drive. They would munch away at their mulberry leaves with complete devotion, wholly consumed by the singular purpose of fattening up to spin more silk. And so, every year I would arrive home from school with a shoebox of silk spinners, and every year my mom refused to even look at the shoebox.

Ever the diplomat, she allowed the box of nightmares into her home, and then she would wait. A few days later, she enlisted a friend, colleague or innocent bystander to do her dirty work. I would arrive home from school to find my silk farm gone. I never understood exactly why the shoebox was removed, only that some vague disaster was averted by disinfecting the house of all things worm shaped.

Later, I wondered if it might have helped had she known that silkworms aren’t worms at all, but insects — caterpillars, the larvae of silk moths. But I doubt it. I understand now that if it looks like a worm and moves like a worm, in the eyes of my mother, it’s pure evil. Asking her to share her home with a box of caterpillars is like asking me to cover myself in honey and share a cave with a hungry bear.

When writing a story about being at ease with yourself and your lot in life, I could imagine no better character than an insect. A caterpillar, perhaps, or better yet a beetle, doing what they do with single-minded purpose, no phobias or fears to trip them up. A fussy dung beetle who thinks too deeply about what they’re eating, after all, will be a very hungry beetle.

When a dung beetle sees dung, they get the dung, eat the dung, and think YUM! HOW CAN I GET MORE DUNG?

Let’s Draw Beetles

Here are examples of two different characters:

Now draw your own beetle!

1. Start with the body — draw a thorax and abdomen.
2. Draw the head, face and antennae.
3. Finally, create the limbs.

Resources

• Frank Weber website (opens in a new window)
• More Dung! Activity Sheets
• Dung Beetle Facts handout (opens in a new window)
• Start with a Book: Bug Buddies (opens in a new window)