The Boy and the Bug

(Written after reading James Thurber's Further Fables For Our Time)

A certain boy of tender years had an even tenderer disposition towards creatures of the bug-and-beetley kind. He was a member of all the best international beetle societies, including the 'Avuncular Aphid Admirers' Association' and 'The Bug People'; and he subscribed to all the important bug magazines and beetle circulars. He would lie awake at night leafing through these august journals reading articles with titles like 'Bug You!' and 'Bug You Too!', and letters that began 'We always hear people talk about 'When the Pigs Are Flying', but do we ever hear talk about when the Flies are Pigging? Hmmm?'

It seems that one evening, this young scholar was leafing through the beetley magazines and nitpicking (literally as well as metaphorically) as was his wont, when what should he discover in his bed but a bug. A bed-bug, no less - a splendid example of Cimex lectularius!
His happiness knew no limits, his joy was unconfined, and his cup runneth-ed over. Immediately, he began to stroke and pet and kiss the bed-bug, and fondle it, and make it feel at home. He placed it in a glass cabinet which he kept for such eventualities, furnishing it out with a bed-bug bungalow, a bed-bug boudoir, a bed-bug bath, and other items of comfort and ease. Every day, morning, noon, afternoon, and night, he would visit the bed-bug, and feed him titbits of choicest meat purchased from the finest, most respectable restaurants, while reading it tracts from his favourite bug magazines.

Nourished by these foods, the bed-bug grew beyond its means, or beyond the boys means, at any rate. One night, while the boy was sleeping, it leapt out of its bed-bug boudoir and its bed-bug bungalow, and devoured the boy, bed and bunk all, before slouching off down the street to devour a few items of architecture and become involved in the Hollywood film industry, which had a thing for gigantic bug movies at the time.

Moral: It is better by far to let the bed bugs bite than to let the bug bite beds.