"Standing in the shower, I noticed a large, a very large, black bug on my leg. Having spent time in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa, Edens to huge bugs that pop up at disconcerting moments, I know exactly what to do.

Do not scream startling people and other wildlife into panic and mayhem.

Do not flick the bug in a wide arc so that it lands on your friend's body.

Instead, with the quick smooth wrist action of flipping a pancake or omelet, flick the bug and stomp it. Flick, squish.

This always works unless you are barefooted. Like the time in Chiang Mai when again I was in the shower and a gigantic thing fell on me. With a minimum of fuss, I adroitly flicked the creature and was almost to the squish when I realized my naked foot. Mid stomp, I improvised and let rip with a kick. Missed. Slipped and came crashing down squishing the bug with my backside.

Not a recommended method of exterminating vermin.

Insects are great equalizers. Decorum always slips and normally stringent boundaries collapse when six (or more) legged creatures invade. If an officer or important administrative person has a spider in her hair, we are no longer inmate and personnel. For a moment, we are Homo sapiens joined against that horrible icky thing. Nor is this necessarily a girlie attitude. I've seen a big man fling his big hat like a frisbee across the courtyard when someone mentioned to him that there was a centipede crawling on its rim.

Are bugs truly worthy of our fear? After all, the majority of them are not malevolent or ill intentioned toward us at all but merely doodling along, minding their own buggy lives. And some of them, honey bees, wasps, praying mantis, are important contributors to the ecosystem and therefore are essential to our very survival. I must admit however, that even though I am intrigued by the fantastic space alien appearance of the praying mantis, if one falls in my hair or startles me in the shower, it's liable to come to a sticky end. What is it that is so unnerving?

I think, like so much in life, it's not the tiny creature itself, but all that our minds and imagination have conjured up and attached to the insect. Some bite so all do. Some (a very tiny few) are lethal so all are potential killers. Some are dirty and cunning so all are filthy and nasty. We generalize the worse case scenario and treat all accordingly.

While I'm not advocating that everyone learn to differentiate between spiders, I do think that before all wisdom winks out, it might be valuable to reexamine some of our fear-based reasoning. If, for example, I had taken a moment to examine the individual bug on my leg before I reacted to the enormous thing on my thigh, I would have discovered a harmless beetle. So what?

You know, I fear that attitude even more than a floor teeming with cockroaches. I fear ambivalence and complacency, ignorance and hatred both in myself and others. No good ever comes of them. And maybe that is the most unsettling thing about insects. They are relentless, vigilant, tireless, impossible to discourage, totally focused, single-minded, absolutely committed and all about community. Nothing like us at all. Could we learn something from them?

Naw. Grounds for more terror! Quick! Squish that ant!" (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, September 16, 2004).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is part of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'