Do Bugs have Karma?

When I was a kid, we ran around with butterfly nets. In Japan, chasing butterflies is for sissies. REAL kids chase serious bugs.

One such bug is noisy like a cicada but a whole lot bigger. The biggest variety is woodchip brown and makes a noise that sounds like "Mii-mii-mii." Maybe that is Japanese bug language for a "Pick me!" love call. Another variety of cicada is a clean, green color and goes "Kana-kana-kana". They seem to be an endangered species. I haven't heard one of those in years. The third kind sounds like a wind-up toy. "Tsuku-tsuku (that's the wind-up key being turned)--hoshi (a winding down sort of sigh".

The absolutely most popular, most sought after bug in the Japanese insect universe is the stag beetle, or kabuto mushi. They are bigger than a grown man's thumb and wear an impressive set of antlers. When they fly--and from the look of them you would never guess they are capable of flight--they sound like helicopters. You can actually hear those stiff beetly wings beating the daylights out of the night air.

To be a captive kabuto mushi is not such a bad life. The kids feed them watermelon and eggplant and set them up in elegant housing. If they can't find one for themselves, someone will buy them a pet kabuto mushi from a department store.

But here's the karma part.

Everyone loves butterflies. Everyone loves fireflies. Kabuto mushi are bought and sold for real money--upwards of $10 dollars or so. However, pity the bug who comes into the world in another, unlovely incarnation. A mosquito, say, or heaven forbid, a cockroach. Would they be loved, photographed for calendar art, fed and valued?

I don't think so. Is that karma?