The All-Natural Secret Spice

Holy crap, I was eating my angel food cake and spotted this thing crawling around in it. I flipped out mentally, but brought it out to my kitchen where the light was better and set it down to take pictures of it.

Thus begins a May 24^th submission by “Freaked Out” on the insect-ophile website What’s That Bug. Freaked Out sent in his photo so that Daniel Marlos, the site’s blogger and operator, could identify the specimen gummed up in the cake.

Marlos informs us that the critter is a Lacewing Larva. “The Lacewing Larva,” he responds, “if it was capable of feeling, would have felt traumatized at the realization that it was no longer in a habitat conducive to hunting Aphids.”

Such empathy with insects seems to be exactly the reason d’etre of Marlos’ blog. One section, entitled “Unnecessary Carnage,” documents the various abuses done to bugs:

Insects are prone to unnecessary slaughter, be it from an overzealous homemaker who doesn’t want to see bugs, or from a strapping he-man who is a closet arachnophobe, or from a youngster who likes to torture. At any rate, we get a goodly amount of photos of poor arthropods whose lives ended prematurely. In an effort to educate, we present Unnecessary Carnage. This page is not intended for the squeamish.

And, indeed, it is not. The latest entry depicts a deceased centipede lying prone on its back, rigid legs splayed (not that a centipede’s legs aren’t always splayed. Here, the posture looks pretty gruesome, though). It was found in a bag of potato chips.

Marlos assures the submitter that it was “a harmless, beneficial House Centipede….[They] will help to keep the home free of Cockroaches and other undesirable creatures by feeding upon them at night.”

And, about the angel food cake, Marlos mentions the Insects Are Food blog, which lists the somewhat disturbing number of insects that get ground up in our food: Four larvae per 500 grams of berries; 80 microscopic insect fragments per 100 grams of chocolate; 60 fragments per 100 grams of peanut butter; and, my favorite, 30 eggs or two maggots, per 100 grams of pizza sauce. Mmm!

To be honest, I was the kind of little girl who went hunting for sidewalk worms after a rainfall… and then I wrapped them around my fingers like little fleshy rings. I also kept a special tin in my room specifically used for scooping up centipedes so I could deposit them outdoors without killing them. I was odd, I’ll give you that.

Now I’m thinking of liberating my inner 10-year old geek and making a totally humane, awesome insect trap.

For more bug related posts, see this neat blog, or this one. You should also checkout Daniel Marlos' book, The Curious World of Bugs.