18/04/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18bgTGxY3U/
The brown insect you just crushed in the kitchen doorway was guarding a nursery six inches underground in your garden. She'd been tending those eggs for weeks.
She's an earwig. Named after a myth that's survived longer than most civilizations — that she crawls into human ears to lay eggs. She doesn't. She hasn't. The name dates to Old English and has outlasted every correction.
What she actually does is something most insects don't. She raises her young.
The European earwig mates in autumn. The pair shares a shallow burrow through winter. By late winter she drives the male out and lays a clutch of small white eggs in a chamber she dug herself.
Then she stays.
She positions herself over the eggs, turns them regularly to prevent mold, and moves them to a new spot if conditions shift. If the male returns, she drives him off. She knows the clutch. She tends it by hand.
When the nymphs hatch, she feeds them mouth to mouth — regurgitating food until they're strong enough to forage on their own. She loses body weight while they grow. The cost is real. She pays it anyway.
The pincers look dangerous. They're not. On human skin, an earwig pinch is barely noticeable. She carries no venom, no disease, and no interest in your house. She came inside through a crack looking for moisture and would rather be back under the damp mulch where her next clutch is forming.
Outside, she works nights — eating aphids, mites, and decaying plant material that would otherwise host fungal growth. She's a decomposer and a predator at the same time.
The next time you lift a stone and see a cluster of pale shapes huddled around a brown insect — you've interrupted a mother with her children.
Put the stone back 🌿
