Thank you
Hello, I have a spider and am so delighted – a teensy Jumping one. I am enjoying him/her even more having discovered your site. I live in NYC (an art person – your "About WTB" photo is fabulous) and your site allows me to live vicariously elsewhere, through people’s insect stories, in places that are not so perversely devoid of nature (roaches, house centipedes and real-estate investors don’t do it for me). I grew up in Oregon, living with/learning about/deeply respecting all forms of nature, including insects, except mosquitos (my father is an acarologist – GW Krantz). So I look at your site every day and it brings me such unadulterated joy (including, needless to say, endless bursts of laughter). One more thing. Tears come to my eyes when I read about people who have come to their senses about their senseless slaughter of harmless/indeed beneficial critters. You are doing a great thing, and through such a beautifully ordinary mode of exchange (I use the word "ordinary" with the utmost respect – just casually talking to people about stuff that is actually important – no hype, no in-your-face, no bs, no Hollywood – wow, a jaded NY’er speaks). Anyway, thank you sincerely from the core of my soul. Evidently-in-parenthetical-remark-mode,
Georgia
Ps. After finishing this note I found my little spider in the toilet. Happily he/she is fine.

hello again
Hi, did you receive my email from Aug 8? I sent you a lot of information concerning your website on that date, and I would just like to know if you ever received it. I’ve attached the email again below.
Hello Lisa Anne and Daniel,
I recently came across your website and I was pleased to see such a vibrant (and well-done) site. I’m an entomologist and evolutionary biologist (specializing on the systematics, taxonomy and evolution of tiger beetles and their close relatives) and I have to say that I’m impressed with your accuracy rate! It’s much, much better than other comparable sites I’ve come across over the years. The two of you must really love insects. In any case, I noticed that you are open to information from specialists, so I thought I’d give you a few ID’s of species that I came across on your pages. I was having trouble sleeping, so I went through all of the tiger beetles, scaratines, etc and checked them out. Hope that helps. I thought there would probably be a lot of sexguttata photos, and it looks like there were. The name confuses so many people, especially in the midwest where they are usually immaculate (I’ve got some really weird variants as well, since I’m completing a revision of the entire clade that that species falls within). I’ll bookmark your site and check it out when I’m having trouble sleeping again!
Daniel P. Duran
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN

thanks & love the site
I came across your site while trying to settle an argument between me and my boyfriend. He said the red velvet ant we saw was a fire ant, I, having lived in an area in southern arkansas, know exactly what a fire ant is and proceded to tell him. He was sure he was right…as all men are…so i of course went to the computer and proved him wrong. Thanks for the help with that..score one for the ladies. While i was here i got tangled up in your wonderfull insect world and stayed for over an hour looking and reading. Great website…keep up the good work. i plan on showing this site to my children who are like me, terrified of insects. Somehow having this knowledge has helped me understand the critters a little more. Thanks again
Carla Knapp
Ozark Mountains, Arkansas

"Angelflies"
Dear What’s That Bug,
Thanks a bunch! For the past three days, I’ve been obsessing– even losing sleep– over a mystery insect that seems to have flourished this year. I’ve known about them for the majority of my life, but always by the name angelflies. Being a zoologically obsessed fifteen year-old, I realized though I knew their name, I knew nothing else. I quickly asked my lover, Google, more. Absolutely nothing useful popped up for the entry "Angelfly". This puzzled me. Why has Google failed me? So, then I asked my mistress, Jeeves (Jeeves can be a mistress if I want him to be). He also could come up with nothing. I then went to Wikipedia… again. Nothing. So, now angry at the world I viciously attacked the line of "X"s on the top, right hand corner of my screen and stomped off to bed. I then sulked around the house all day, quite distraught on the lack of knowledge I had on such a seemingly basic creature. Today, we went on a walk. As we walked I saw one flit by, as if the wind was the choice medium of steering. I gently cupped my hands around it and then tormented the simple minded creature for the sake of observation. I noticed that the white-furred little pixie had four wings… evidently not really a fly. As I paid more attention to everything under the fur, I saw that it had dark, blue-gray skin. Sort of like ash. But what startled me the most was that it looked a lot like an aphid. Bingo! As soon as I got back home, I pounced on your site and searched under the only section I seemed to miss on my hunt amongst your site… the aphids. The entry that caught my eye was that of the wooly aphids, sent by Ryan. I then went back to Google and did an image search and got a very spiffy photo of a "Wooly Apple Aphid". An exact match to what has plagued my dreams for so long! Well… three days… but let’s not split hairs. So, again, thanks for your help in clearing my thoughts! These are truly beautiful little bugs… with maybe not quite as delicate of a name as I’m accustomed to (leave it to West Virginian’s to screw up a perfectly good Google search query!).
Thanks a bunch,
Justin Caruthers

Hi Justin,
What a fabulous letter. Sadly, as it is without an image, we have placed it on our Fanmail 2 page. We hope you are planning to go to college as a wit like yours would be wasted in a factory or Walmart. Let us know if you ever need a letter of recommendation.

Not a ? BUT a Thanks
This is a really nice site. I am a homeschool mom and my children and I are fasinated by creepy crawlies so when we found a mass of Millepeds we wanted to know what for sure they were. After a short search we found your site and imeadiately found the answer to our question. I will be making your site a perminate tool of teaching in our home. I also forwarded your site to many of my homeschool freinds it will be a great benifit to us. AND who knows as curoius as my children are I bet it will not be long before we come up with a bug we can not ID with out your help. A few years ago when we moved to this area (middle of Iowa) I found Morman crickets and not recognizing them took them to freinds at Iowa State University for ID. Eventually finding out that these crickets are not normally found East of Nebraska so that was really fun. We still frequently see them in the fall when there is not drought conditions. In our area we also see large praying manits, walking sticks of serveral kinds and LARGE black millipeds here NONE of which I had encountered growing up in Southern Iowa. Its been fun learning about these bugs. Oh and the huge wolf spiders we grow here DONT entertain us as much but we tolerate them. Happy bug hunting and thanks for your incredible site.
Michele Kalsem

A Reader Comments (07/08/2008)
NOT A ?, COMMENT ON OLD POST-grammar hound
Hey Bugman,
Don’t want to waste your time on something non-bug related, but in perusing your old fanmail posts I ran across one that a homeschooling mother sent to you and you posted on 5/2/06. Sorry to say, but I’m afraid that her children would be better off in public school with the egregious amount of spelling errors there are in her email to you. It continues to astound me how many people think their children are better off at home with only their ignorant parents as teachers. Even a public school grammar teacher would be better than learning grammar from her! Your grammar, however, is usually quite excellent!! Thanks again for the great site. And let me know if you ever need any editing work done. Thanks,
Amy in Rockford, IL

House Centepede Scare…
Hello There,
I just wanted to thank you for providing me with the info I needed last night! I live in Western Massachusetts and with the weather starting to turn, we are seeing signs of life everywhere. Last night in our darkened living room my girlfriend did the whole scream and run away thing. And this time it wasn’t even me. I had caught the movement across the floor too. I asked her to please get me a drinking glass. (My preferred catch and release tool.) She did, and I turned on the light to find a 1″ house centipede sitting patiently in the middle of my living room. She got me the glass and I managed to move quick enough (It was probably blinded by the bright lights) to catch it. Now the fun began. Trying to convince my girlfriend that it should live in the basement. I had read many times on your site that these friends are beneficial. But she wanted none of it. It was “Creepy” and she didn’t want it in the house. End of story. I didn’t even tell her that it could double in size… Well, I kept it around for a few minutes observing it running around a Tupperware bowl I put it in, but finally it was time to play outside. I released him in the yard with a quiet invitation to come right back in, but to try to stay out of the living room! We’ll see if it takes me up on the offer. Keep up the great work on the site. Without your help and information I probably would have been screaming right along with her! (They are pretty creepy looking after all!)
Thanks,
Christopher