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holding certain enzymes, the other containing a gumbo of hydrogen compounds. When threatened the beetle internally mixes these two fluids, producing a hot caustic potion of benzoquinones that explodes forth, at over two hundred degrees F., from a pair of anal spigots. The spigots can berotated voluntarily, enabling the beetle to aim its vapor blast straight into the eyes of a hungry frog. Make my day, frog. To Duane T. Gish this stalwart little insect represents nothing less than the wisdom of God manifested—directly—in the works of nature and refutes that farfetched evolutionary alternative. Dr. Gish has even publicly challenged an eminent coleopterist to explain “how an ordinary beetle could evolve into a bombardier beetle. I want to know how natural selection has done that.” The coleopterist has responded, in plausible detail, but Dr. Gish doesn’t seem to have been listening. And last year the ICR publishing house produced a children’s book titled Bomby, the Bombardier Beetle, devoted to showing that Bomby’s physiology, too clever for evolution, can only be the product of an individual act of creative ingenuity by You Know Who.
    At this point I can’t help remembering a quote from the evolutionist and philosopher Yogi Berra. Jim Piersall, before stepping into the batter’s box, scratched out a talismanic cross on the dirt near home plate. Yogi said: “Why don’t you just let Him watch the game?”
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    Enough frivolity. Let’s talk about bedbugs.
    It can be reasonably argued that all bedbugs are disreputable. These are sly little wingless insects, with flattened bodies that allow them to hide in tiny crevices, mouthparts suited to puncturing and sucking, and a taste for protein-rich meals of blood. They are fast on their feet and sneaky; they stay out of sight during daylight. Two related families, equally unsavory in character, are together generally known by the “bedbug” label, though only a few species actually lurk among funky mattresses to stage their blood raids against humans. Other species either parasitize bats, birds, or various larger mammals, or else prey upon mites and small insects. The association with bats is especially strong, and some scientists speculate that it’s because the bedbug group developed from cave-dwelling ancestors, verminthat prowled the guano piles hunting for insect prey and then eventually transferred their attentions to the red-blooded mammals dangling above. Cimex lectularius is the most famous species, the common bedbug that has been fervently hated by mankind for hundreds of years. Back in eighteenth-century England, C. lectularius provided work for what may have been the first professional exterminators, including a family named Tiffin whose slogan was “May the Destroyers of Peace be destroyed by us, Tiffin and Son, Bug Destroyers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family.” An interesting beast with a noble history, C. lectularius, but the most remarkable thing about it is its method of copulation. This kinky procedure is known in the euphemistic scientific jargon as traumatic insemination. In language more vivid but no less precise, it’s a combination of stabbing and rape.
    The male of C. lectularius is armed with a long sharp penis. Instead of linking genitals with the female, though, he uses this organ to puncture her in the abdomen. He then ejaculates into her body cavity, and the sperm travels through her bloodstream to special receptacles, where she can store it until her time of ovulation. The puncture wound heals over, and all is fine. To you and me this may sound like the worst sort of S&M, but to bedbugs it’s just a reproductive strategy that has proven successful over many generations.
    Why should traumatic insemination be necessary? The answer to that, evidently, is something called the mating plug, another bizarre reproductive strategy seen among