This is what bugs are for. We're at the Hawai'i Nature Center in Maui's 'Iao Valley. First the Nature Center's Sally Fujimoto gathers us into a room decorated in neo-Flintstones faux rock benches. She asks the kids what defines an insect. The boy knows bugs.
Talk turns to scorpions, cockroaches, mosquitoes and flies.
I hear a child's voice say. They're just doing what bugs do, which is, mostly, they make dirt out of everything they eat. Which is what we need to grow our food in. So they're like ecology teachers. Of course, that child's voice is only inside my head.