When you live out in the middle of the country (no, NOT Buttfuque, Iowa: We're 6 hours outside of Buttfuque on a gravel road, thank you), and are surrounded by miles of highly pesticided cropland, you get more than your fair share of bugs. They see that cropduster a-comin', and head for the hills � or your living room, whichever is closer. In Nebraska, your living room is always much, much closer.

Currently attending our insect convention (with free valet parking and a two-drink-per-night minimum) are a fabulous variety of creeping critters. Some are cool. Most are decidedly not.

Stink Bugs

The encyclopedia says you can identify stink bugs by "antennae being comprised of five segments." I spot them more easily by noticing an ass pointing straight up on the air and the lip-curling aroma that soon follows. Sure, they're annoying. But I really have to respect something smaller than a quarter that can fart for three minutes and not deflate.

Ticks

Ticks suck. They spend their whole lives waiting for a bag of blood to walk by. It doesn't matter if that bag is made of fur, leather, or tender pink skin: inside there's hemoglobin, dammit! Feeling their little legs cavorting across your belly is bad enough. But what's even worse is getting nekkid with your beloved (or be-liked, if you've just met) and hearing them say, "I didn't know you had a mole there � holy shit, it's moving!" It's about as conducive to romance as finding a big bottle of Valtrex in the bathroom, or a huge tube of Monistat on the nightstand.

Wasps

These bastards scare the living shit out of me. I don't care if they can make multi-story apartment buildings out of their own spit � they are EVIL and must be destroyed. I shiver in fear and disgust just thinking about them. It used to be that as soon as one would come in the house, I would leave. And stay away until a braver soul ventured inside and returned with mashed wasp on a tissue. But then we got this electric tennis racket thingie that electrocutes them in flight. So it's game, sizzle and match, baby! Gone! Dead! Smokin'! Hahahahaha! My house is my own again. (I still run away like Mary Kate Olsen being chased by a Snickers bar when I see them outside, though.)

Lady Bugs

Everything you've been told about these sweet, clownish little critters is a load of crap. They DO bite. And they DON'T fly away home even when you tell them their kids are burning. Unfeeling bitches. Though they may be individually cute, en masse they are creepy as all hell. Who knew that that little lint-filled niche above the washer could provide adequate housing for 8,000? Ewww!

Grasshoppers

Whatever you want to eat from your garden, the grasshoppers want, too. And there's nothing quite like closing your fingers around a burgeoning, ripe tomato and squishing a grasshopper into the mush they've chewed up in the back. They are useless and stupid and ugly. However, they cats love them. Plenty of play value, especially with the large ones. It's fun to watch a cat spring, leap and flip for something you can't even see � like an adorable little demonic possession on parade.

LIghtning Bugs

Earlier this spring, we had a bigtime infestation of these odd beetly looking things. Hundreds of them around the door, scrambling into the house, crawling into the car, and flying into my hair. They didn't bite, but lord, how they stunk when we tried to sweep them away. And there were thousands of them. Annoying and a bit unnerving. But then the magic happened: their butts lit up. And suddenly they were most happy-making. Really, who couldn't smile at a hovering male bug desperately flashing DO ME...DO ME...PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO ME while the female reclining in the grass blinks back MAYBE...I DON'T THINK SO...OKAY...NO, WAIT. It's hundreds of high school prom nights melded into a single outpouring of luminescent horniness.