I have many connections to bugs. One of the earliest is related to my late friend Billy. He was an avid collector, and a lifelong beach bum on Lake Erie. Any house he lived in was soon filled with detritus, natural and manmade, found on the lake shore. When I was very young, he would often bring things to my home, knowing I was easily fascinated. One day when I was perhaps twelve years old, he pulled into my family’s driveway in his battered pickup truck and retrieved from the bed a bucket of rotten wood, almost turning into soil. He reached into it and pulled up a handful, revealing that just under the surface there were dozens of beetle larvae, twice the size of a grown man’s thumb. 

I constructed the waxes for these cast grubs over a year ago now, with the memory of Billy in mind. Before casting, I lumped many of them together, after casting I attached those to a short wire, and added others at the far end. I envision these grubs underground, supping on the root of a less than fortunate plant.