Field Guide Fever

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by Terry Krautwurst

More than books, they're windows on a wider world.

My life of addiction began a long time ago.

It was a perfect 10th birthday party: the weather was sunny and warm, all three of my friends were there, my Aunt Louise couldn't make it, and the presents were coming hot and heavy. Our side yard was littered with boxes and bits of wrapping paper.

I might never even have noticed the tiny package, overlooked and half-buried in birthday detritus. But then Johnny McGowan came around a corner of the house waving a battery-powered burp gun, shouting "Banzai!" As I turned to flee, I stepped on a paper plate greased with mushy Neapolitan ice cream and —whomp! —fell face forward.

There it was, beneath a rumpled sheet of gift wrap. "I missed one!" I screamed, leaping to my feet and pawing at the present. My pals gathered 'round.

It was a paperback book about the size of a wallet. Insects, the cover said. A Golden Guide.

From that moment on, we were out for bugs. Stink bugs and shield bugs (page 42). Spittlebugs (page 38). Flatheaded borers (page 134). Tiger beetles (page 109). Sphinx moths (page 84). Caterpillar hunters (page 115). You name it; if it was in "The Book," we'd search for it, leaving no shrub unshaken, no stone unturned.

We never did find The Ultimate Insects, the carrion beetles gnawing at a dead mouse on pages 112 to 113. But we did capture and identify countless leafhoppers (page 34), field crickets (page 22), earwigs (page 29) and cabbage butterflies (page 76).

There was no stopping me after that day. I filled my room with Golden Guides: Birds. Trees. Rocks, Gems and Minerals. Reptiles and Amphibians.Butterflies and Moths. Each little book opened a window on a wider world: Those weren't speckled birds out there, those were Eastern meadowlarks. That wasn't just a pretty rock, it was granite. "Hey, neat butterfly," one of my buddies would say. "Hmmm, Eastern tiger swallowtail," I'd remark offhandedly.

Looking back, I realize that I treasured those books not only because they helped me put names to familiar plants and animals, but because they gave me new and amazing things to look for. Each was a catalog of wonders I dreamed to one day see. Carrion beetles. A gold nugget. A luna moth. A whistling swan.