Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield

It was a lot of fun rewriting an old fable about the rewards of hard work into a neo-communist tract. But as I was doing it yesterday, I realized just how inadequate Aesop's characters are to express the nuances of today's economy.
Not many of us have the spirit of the ant who works himself to death for the benefit of the group. Well, maybe the Japanese company men touted by the Reaganites back in the '80s. Are they still the norm? And the grasshopper is also a confusing image. Is he a musician, living the bohemian lifestyle? Or a tobacco-spitting redneck out to game the system?
Anyway, squeezing American capitalism into the fable seems a pretty tight fit. And it skirts a better question: What type of insect would an optimist be?
The first temptation is to look for bugs that seem kind of human. What better optimist than a bug with a somewhat human face, for example? An insect that seems to look you straight in the eye and say, "How dare you think of squashing me! I'm one of you!"
I found two or three good candidates on the web. The samurai beetle:

The shield bug:


And the skull crab spider:

But as it turns out, two of those bugs are stink bugs, and, I don't know, it seems wrong that an optimist would be stinky. (I think I may have found my new avatar, though.)

Likewise, I had trouble with what I'll call the "bloodsucker family," Fleas, ticks, mosquitos and the like. And wasps. Insects that lay their eggs inside of other insects...wow. All those bugs would make pretty good villains in the fable. But you couldn't call them optimists.

The water spider would make a decent optimist, though. This little bug lives and hunts underwater, despite the fact that it has absolutely no physical adaptations to make it easier. It can't breathe underwater. Instead, the water spider carries pockets of air down on its abdomen and makes a bubble nest, which it has to keep replenishing.
It would be like one of us saying, "Hey, you know, I like swimming. Why not set up house about 20 miles offshore? I don't have any scuba gear but that's no problem. I'll just bob up every so often and collect some air in my shirt."




Maybe someone should introduce them to those bubble-blowing dolphins.

The dung beetle is another obvious choice for optimistic insect. Dung beetles are famous for living in, working with and eating feces. Some of them roll it into balls and pushing those giant balls of feces up and down the countryside all day long. Here's a video of one with his special prize that I would nominate for "feel good movie of the year."




On second thought, maybe the dung beetle isn't the best choice for optimist bug. He does what most of us do every day, after all. Nothing to watch here, folks.

Okay. There is one bug. One who stands alone in her tenacity, inner strength and ability to inspire.
Ladies and gentlemen, the cockroach.

She's an opportunist who takes every adverse situation an turns it to her favor. I have personally seen cockroaches eat laundry detergent. Not the stuff you buy today, either, but a real he-man's detergent, filled with phosphates and all kind of other stuff deemed too dangerous for us mere humans.
A cockroach doesn't bow to the authority of the hive. She doesn't grovel by prettifying herself or having pictures on her back. She doesn't stink. She survives, even thrives, despite that pile of garbage that surrounds her.
She eats, she lives, and when we try to wipe her out, she gives it back by climbing up through the sewer pipes and giving us a good scare.
If that isn't something to pattern yourself after, I don't know what is.