I hold a deep belief that knowledge and understanding lead to compassion. If we understood better those we hate or fear, we would find compassion and progress toward friendship, peace, caring for others and peaceful mindfulness.
I’ve found that while understanding doesn’t always lead to love or agreement, it can often lead to respect.
Sometimes, though, I’ve found a newfound respect to be disquieting — blindly hating something can be much easier than respectfully coexisting. I’ve experienced this both with humans and with bugs.
My topic today concerns the difficult path toward respectful co-existence. I’ve seen this little critter in my garden, and having seen the destruction it causes to my plants grew a strong dislike of it.
The creature in question; the pillbug. Known to eat seedlings, the roly-poly has been no friend of mine.
Recently I was chatting with a friend about recycling — more like venting about how we don’t have faith in the recycling system — and she mentioned that she shreds white paper and uses it successfully as mulch.
My friend mentioned that some people claim such materials have heavy metals in them. But she doesn’t worry because pillbugs in her soil consume and neutralize heavy metals.
This piqued my interest, and I began reading about these bugs for which I harbored so much disdain.
I learned that although commonly referred to as bugs, the Armadillidium vulgare (Latreille) are in fact terrestrial crustaceans in the Armadillidiidae family, more closely related to lobsters and crayfish than to any insect.
The female little grey armored bugs have a marsupium, or brood pouch on their tender underside. A mother keeps her brood of eggs in her pouch until they hatch after three to four weeks. The babies stay in the pouch for some additional time — one source I found said one to two weeks, another said a few months.
Pillbugs have a lifespan of two to five years, and a female may have one to three broods per year. Once they emerge from the safety of their mother’s pouch the young begin one of many molts.
The second molt, about two weeks after they leave their mother, releases their seventh pair of legs. The molting happens in two stages — one half of the critter at a time.
Due to their development from marine crustaceans, pillbugs breathe through gills, and thus need damp environments and suffocate if dried out.
They prefer to eat decomposing materials (they are an asset to any compost pile) but will eat live plants and fruit if convenient. Observing this one aspect of their lives developed my dislike for them.
As my friend mentioned, pillbugs consume heavy metals in soils — I found this reiterated online, but no scientific evidence of what happens to the metals in the pillbug’s gut when it dies.
Along with helping break down dead matter they also eat a fungus, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
They are an important food source for the pillbug killer spider (I looked it up, and have seen many in my garden). Centipedes, ants, birds, frogs and toads may also snack on pillbugs.
I didn’t set out to find compassion for this little creature I considered a garden pest. But now I feel I have a new friend, instead of a foe. If they cause havoc on my seedlings again I may try gentle means of discouraging them, such as not heavily mulching young plants, or creating a mulch pile to attract pillbugs and then moving it to a different location such as my compost pile.
Yet again I’ve reinforced my belief that understanding is the path to progress.
ALDONA BIRD is a journalist, exploring possibilities of local productivity and sustainable living in Preston County.
