I do not know whether I was a man dreaming
I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming
I was a man.

--Chuang Tse

One of the shortest poems ever written was about insects: "Ugh-Bugh!"

- D. K. McEvan.

Kevan I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I send among you.

-- Joel 2:25

To make a prairie it takes a clover and a bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

-- Emily Dickenson

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.

-- Odgen Nash

A horse and a flea and three blind mice
Met each other while skating on ice.
The horse he slipped and fell on the flea.
The flea said, "Oops, there's a horse on me!"

From Treasury of Mother Goose Rhymes

Like train cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flower goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon.

-- Emily Dickinson

Houseflies find sugar with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive than human tongues.

Approximately 2,000 silkworm cocoons are needed to produce one pound of silk.

While gathering food, a bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.

Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.

Mexican Jumping Beans, sometimes sold commercially, actually have a caterpillar of a bean moth inside.

It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce.

Bug Facts prepared by the Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with the Public Inquiry Mail Service, Smithsonian Institution Information Sheet Number 177

Apple butter

5 insects per 100g

Berries

4 larvae per 500g OR 10 whole insects per 500g

Ground paprika

75 insect fragments per 25g

Chocolate

80 microscopic insect fragments per 100g

Canned sweet corn

2 - 3mm-length larvae, cast skins or fragments

Cornmeal

1 insect per 50g

Canned mushrooms

20 maggots per 100g

Peanut butter

60 fragments per 100g (136 per lb)

Tomato paste, pizza, and other sauces

30 eggs per 100g OR 2 maggots per 100g

Wheat flour

75 insect fragments per 50g

Ingredients:

1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
2 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts
2 eggs
1/4-cup dry-roasted army worms

Directions: Mix together all ingredients. Bake in greased loaf pan at 350 for about 1 hour.

Ingredients:

- 4 servings
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 16 tomato hornworms
- medium green tomatoes, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
- Salt and pepper to taste

White cornmeal In a large skillet or wok, heat the oil. Then lightly fry the hornworms, about 4 minutes, taking care not to rupture the cuticles of each insect under high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Season tomato rounds with salt and pepper, then coat with cornmeal on both sides. In a large skillet, fry tomatoes until lightly browned on both sides . Top each round with 2 fried tomato hornworms. Garnish the paired hornworms with a single basil leaf.