DATE: Tuesday, February 25, 1997            TAG: 9702250524

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B01  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

OTHERS HELP ME DIG UP TRUTH ABOUT DOODLEBUGS

I'd meant, after touching on doodlebugs last week, not to mention them again until the next century, if then.

But life being quirky, particularly one involving you all, the doodlebug resurfaced in a letter from Virginia Shell of Norfolk.

In my recollection of finding one under a brick, when 4, and eating that single one at the behest of a much older woman, age 6, Virginia discovered an error.

``One would never find a doodlebug under a brick,'' Virginia writes, drawing from her experience as a child on a farm in Amelia.

That ``little brown fellow'' made a home in a hole in the shape of a funnel in soft, dry dirt, she remembers.

``I have called out many doodlebugs but never ate one,'' she writes.

``We would squat down and put our mouths very close to the top of his home and say, over and over, `Doodlebug, doodlebug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children home!'

``Soon the doodlebug would start wriggling in the bottom of his funnel home in the dirt and then come into sight. We would then move along.''

It was apparent Virginia and I were talking of two different species.

The critter in my mind's eye was tiny, gray, segmented. When disturbed, it rolled into a tight little ball about the size of a black-eyed pea. It looked like a slightly oblong pill.

It looked like a doodlebug ought to look, but it wasn't one.

From my description, Dr. Deborah Waller, biologist at Old Dominion University, identified it as a pillbug or sowbug, which isn't a bug at all. It's a crustacean or isopod. It lives in moist places under rocks or within rotting logs.

Wrong all these years!

Virginia Shell's doodlebug is the larval stage of an ant lion.

``They're neat,'' said Dr. Waller. ``They occur in open, sandy areas. ''

Its brownish, oblong, segmented body is covered with hair-like setae. Huge, pincer-like jaws project from the front of its head. It lurks out of sight in the sand, waiting, with just its jaws sticking out.

When an ant falls into the little pit, the ant lion grabs and eats it. As an adult, it flies off and lays eggs.

So Virginia Shell was right.

But it seems that in my childhood we sang about a lady bug whose house was burning. So I called Atlanta and asked Betty Head, the sister of my boyhood chum, to sing that song. She did.

Lady bug, lady bug fly away home.

Your house in on fire and your children all alone.

``That's it!'' I said.

``Tell me one thing,'' Betty said.

``Anything!'' I said. ``Shoot!''

``Do you still eat doodlebugs?''

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