How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a short story

On Spotted Lanternflies and efforts to exterminate them

The following is from a notebook found by me recently at a bar in a large city in the eastern United States where, among other things, the invasive species include the tree of heaven, the european starling, and the spotted lanternfly. I thought it was strange to find a real notebook at a noisy bar where consultants, investment bankers, and their ilk gather like penitents in some ritualized despair of the past to drink like they’re still in college (with much the same crowd that they attended college with). In this Babylon of corporate homunculi compelled to wearily swagger and drink and dance like reliable assets in a scheme of which the sole aim is to increase the frenzy of the world until it combusts, I found a genuine notebook with crazed ramblings. A paper story in a city of digitized desires, an organic idea in a place long-since pre-packaged. If, in their daily lives, any of the lobotomized men at this bar had just once looked up from their dual monitor setups and smartwatch screens long enough to notice the invasion of spotted lanternflies, they probably would have thought a subscription-based service could solve the issue; and that blockchain would save the trees. Here I found a notebook of merit written by a man who had seen the world at its most brutal, at its most symbolic. I needed to find this man; I needed to listen to him talk.

Yet the book was unsigned. I asked around and no one could explain the presence of this notebook, implying in their confused reactions that it was just an elaborate piece of trash. I sat down in the middle of the crowded bar, much to my friends’ protests, and flipped through the notebook, promising myself I would read it fully the next day. Unfortunately, I got too drunk that evening and lost the notebook. What you will see following is the faithfully recorded contents as I remember them, typed up the following Saturday morning, hungover.

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August 2025

The Market Bear, Bull, or Fly.

The market has gone all bullish I mean bearish because of the recent bullshit, or I mean bearshit, going on with Trump, or should I say Judas, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler as one evil hydra. Because of him I lost my job. It was a nice, cushy job, too; I would log into my laptop at 9, zoom into the routine meetings as background noise for me to play Xbox and watch Netflix, and I lost the job because the market has gone all bullish or bearish or whatever because Trump decided to go all Mao Zedong. I should’ve never believed in him the first time. Or the second time.

I lost my job in March. It’s now August and not much has changed. Still unemployed, although my whiskey of choice has descended gradually down the shelf from middle to the far bottom shelf, where dust bunnies graze the feet of the bottles like supplicants with arms upraised to a god that tastes like caramel and feels like sunshine. So that changed. And two more things have changed that I can think of, now that I’m thinking about it: there have been an absurd number of Spotted Lanternflies everywhere in the streets, in the park, on the trees, on the windows; and I have recently joined a crew dedicated to exterminating them.

I suppose, there is one more thing that that has changed, now that I really think about it. I decided to start this journal, mostly because I have nothing better to do. So in summary, what has changed since I was fired: 1) worse whiskey, 2) the advent of the spotted lanternflies, 3) the beginning of this journal, and 4) the beginning of my career in the SLFES.

I would not have otherwise joined the SLFES (Spotted Lanternfly Extermination Squad). I am naturally quite lazy and was thus happy drawing on severance while it lasted; I also found the Spotted Lanternfly to be not just harmless but even quite beautiful with their flashing shocks of red and their gentle puce-colored wings. If they weren’t hurting me, why should I care? In fact I even respected their pioneering spirit, their ability to come Westward and conquer. Well, I was at the bar one day when Olivia (yes, that Olivia) said just how much she despises those bugs. You despise them? I said, that’s a strong a word. Despise, she said, I think they’re worse than awful. Me too, I said, me too.

Well, it turns out that she knew about my unemployment woes (her words, not mine; I would have never called this whole thing a woe, but instead a long and much-needed period of rest), and she also knew about a new initiative doing something to stop the bug. I hate the word initiative, I thought; yet I asked her to say more (while I inched slowly closer to her). Funded by some eccentric billionaire, the SLFES was seeking hardworking, inspired, and driven young men to work four days a week hunting the bug in the city’s long and extensive park system. $300 a day. I didn’t like the sound of hardworking, inspired, and driven, but I didn’t want to say that to Olivia, who at this moment I thought may really go home with me. I didn’t want to sign up, but I was drunk; she was insistent.

When I awoke the next day at noon, Olivia had not come home with me, and I had an email from four hours previous requesting an interview at 12:30. For some unexplainable reason, I actually did it; and for some even more unexplainable reason, I got the job.

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The Extermination Squad

Bull Run Park splits the city right down the middle, starting down by the river as a small funnel before widening up north into a wide valley, of sorts, that in this hot and humid climate is like a real jungle in the middle of an otherwise corporate, modern, and vapid city. The SLFES was to stalk all 2,500 acres of Bull Run Park for the hated spotted lanternfly.

Our methods were brutal. We were to stalk the fly, we were to find the fly, we were to kill the fly. Our instructor and Extermination Squad Commander (SLFES-C) was one “Yo-yo” Yossef Hammerschmidt; a surprisingly active elderly man, with tanned skin, close-cropped silver hair, a lazy eye, German-engineered biceps, and an accent that could have been German or Latin American or vaguely Middle Eastern.

Our field kit prized maneuverability above all else, and included:

- a small but remarkably potent flamethrower

- a flashlight

- a walkie talkie system

- a map of bull run park

- a water bottle

- a fly swatter

- nicotine gum (for focus).

Our work was to be done at night; to catch the bug in its most defenseless, in its most unsuspecting; to rouse the bug from its bed, so that they awake thinking their dreaming, and to kill it. To number its days in the dead of night: this was our imperative. This was not a war between equals, fought with Kantian civility; this was a war of terror, a war of survival, a war of extinction; and our methods would be brutal.

Upon finding the bug, we were to burn it and burn all plant life near it. The Spotted Lanternfly, Yo-yo said, was an existential threat to our nation’s agriculture. Imagine fields of corn left to rot, imagine tobacco plants burnt, imagine soy turned to mush. So much money would be lost. Destroy the bug, he said, destroy the bug and everything associated with the bug. With this speech, he brought us to a huge, beautiful oak tree. A single Spotted Lanternfly was on its trunk. Destroy the bug, he said. Destroy everything around the bug. He made us torch the whole tree.

In the light of this great fire, he swore us in as Exterminators dedicated mind, body, and soul to the cause. We were the brave few who protected America from complete obliteration. He passed around a handle of good, American whiskey; the best I’d had in months. The oak tree burned harsh and brutal, casting our shadows out before us to flicker on the ground like heroes, like monsters.

Of the five men who had showed up (although seven had been fired, meaning two had been a no-shows), three were in high school, one was a shifty type, and the other was me. An inspiring lot.

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The Dream

The first night, I stumbled drunk from the clearing and burned indiscriminately anything that looked buglike. My methods were not exact. In the light of the premature sun in my hands, I watched rabbits and squirrels burn alive, hearing their screams through the roar of the flame. Eventually I stumbled upon the high schoolers, who had devised a genius way to get high with the fuel for the flamethrowers. Joining them, I felt the most perfect happiness. I fell asleep. In my sleep a vision came to me. It was not a dream but a series of visions. Ears of corn turned red by the monstrous bodies of spotted lanternflies writhing. Fish, flesh, fowl squirmed with masses of bugs bursting from their skin. I saw the city overrun with bugs, all surfaces covered with puce and flashes of red. The market was no longer bearish but flyish, all was lost. From this horror was birthed a great new beginning. I held the flamethrower aloft like Prometheus, I stole thunder from the heavens and came burning upon the hordes of bugs; I split the wide crawling sea with cleansing fire. Light splintered from the heavens and brought universal peace upon the earth.

I awoke. Universal peace I said. I roused the high schoolers. Universal peace I said. They screamed at first but then they understood. Winning words, a good speech, and they understood what was at stake. Yo-yo wanted our methods to be brutal; I knew they must be exact. Fire was our friend and darkness was our enemy. To nicotine! To flashlights! To flamethrowers.

It was universal peace; it was beautiful; it was exact. The park burned and the darkness was not just washed away; it was purged; it was purified. The bug would not be able to hide and make love and multiply in these gorgeous flames; universal peace would reign!

From Apocalypse Now

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The Jungle

I will win. I have stalked the forest for three days now without leaving. I sleep in the daytime in the shade of the dogwood tree. At night I hunt. The high schoolers deserted yesterday, dropping their packs to run while I faced the conflagration alone, back turned. I do not need them; I am God now in this jungle. Only I remain faithful to the cause, although I am faithless to all else but my impulse to kill the bug.

The biblical god said let there be light; it was this act that created the world. You could say then that the flame is the essence of the truth. By that logic, the flame is 1,000 degrees of truth per second. My ultimate thesis: what burns is what is not true. The flame purifies; it clarifies.

Applying this logic further, the bugs are a glitch in the universe; they are not meant to be here and they threaten our world’s very existence. That is why they are called a bug in the first place. I am fixing the world; but I am not a mere repairman. I am its creator, now. I hunt at night; in my hands I wield the sun.

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Babylon Triumphant

I was in the jungle for two weeks alone. My eternal flame never ceased burning. I devised great methods of extermination, but because I was wholly devoted to the cause, I neglected to make careful record of the events. My journal is blank. These battles go unrecorded.

Much has changed, though. I was sleeping by the banks of the creek when Yo-yo, a double agent for the bugs, kayaked stealthily to my encampment. He took my flame, he took my pack, he took my rank from the squad. He gave me my paycheck, my pink slip, and the bus fare home. The war was never meant to be won; it was all a lie. He hated my methods because they were effective.

I once believed. I once thought I could change the world, that I could save us from our destruction. I didn’t realize that the destruction was inherent from the start. The planned obsolescence of the universe. Bug after bug will come. Those who fight it are the ones they call crazy.

I’m writing this from a bar now, my first real food and drink after two weeks of acorns and creek water. While I sit here I am getting weaker and the bug is getting stronger. What can I do? Another round wouldn’t hurt.

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The notebook ends here, as if the writer had paused mid-thought. A hundred blank pages remain. I went on a walk after typing up the contents of the notebook. On the walk I saw fifteen Spotted Lanternflies, of which ten had been squashed. I thought that they were really a beautiful creature. One landed on my shoulder as I stood watching. I raised my hand; I hesitated; I let it fly away.

Peace and Love,

William Diana.