Panic in a big yellow box

Stink bugs. All over the place.

Or at least, all over the bus.

Soaking in the rays on the sun-warmed yellow metal. On the windows, on the door, on the ceiling, crawling across the seat backs.

Add several dozen kids, the inevitable proportion of them still harboring a child's alarm at anything creepy-crawly, the predictable number unable to inhibit their excited reflexes for even a moment.

Bedlam in the bus.

Get on the mike, explain that they're harmless, that they don't attack people, that they don't bite. Or sweep sand off the beach - it's about as effective.

So just shrug your shoulders and laugh ... and hope they don't squish any of them.

For the record, they're harmless to humans, but they are pests. They're a recently introduced species (probably in the 1990s or 1980s) from Asia, and they are a problem for farmers. But really, they're not a danger to school kids on a bus!


(For all you ever wanted to know about stink bugs - more properly, Brown marmorated stink bugs (Halyomorpha halys), go to this web page from Penn State, which is also the source of the lovely portrait above.)

A lesson the teacher learned too late

The other day in Fairfield, Connecticut, a "popular teacher" shot a teen-age boy to death. No, not a class-room altercation, not an angry kid out for revenge over some classroom disciplinary action. He shot his son, in the driveway of his sister's house next door.

The news report (see the Associated Press report from the Washington Post here) dwelt on the tragedy, the mistaken identity in the dark and the  confusion of events that led up to it.

But what struck me even more than that were the implications of this paragraph from the article:

     State police said the shooting happened after Jeffrey Giuliano got a call from his sister next door saying that someone might be trying to break into her home in their neighborhood of attractive colonial-style houses. Giuliano grabbed a handgun and went outside to investigate, troopers said.

To re-state: the sister - the boy's aunt - was frightened and called her brother. Not the police; her brother. Same phone, different number, different results.

Had he been thinking, the brother, the teacher, the parent, would have called 9-1-1. Instead, he grabbed a gun, and went out to play a real-life game of cops-and-robbers, an amateur in the starring role of a tragedy that will forever sear the lives of his entire family. He went out to "investigate," and then his world changed forever.

Had the sister and the brother holed up in their respective homes and waited for the professionals, the incident would have played out very differently, almost certainly without its tragic ending. The police would have arrived in a few minutes, and would have worked to resolve the apparent emergency non-violently. As the boy wasn't apparently threatening anybody, they would in all likelihood have been far more hesitant to use their guns; would have called in reinforcements if necessary, would have illuminated the boy, would have talked to him, would have discovered what was happening. Most important, they almost certainly would not have killed the boy, and the family-rending tragedy would have been averted.

The lessons are clear. Maybe guns don't kill ... but people who rely upon them to resolve their fears often do. Beyond that, if ever one thinks that guns are needed, call on the professionals. It's easy; just dial 9-1-1. Then you'll have all the firepower you need, and it will be in the hands of people who know how to use it ... and when not to.

We have too many guns. Far too many. And far, far too often, they become the vehicle of tragedy.



Afterthoughts: What do you suppose the father would give to have those moments back again, so he could change their course? And how long do you suppose it will take him to put this night in the past? Probably a lot more time than he has left on this earth ....