All Creatures, Great And Small ... Even The Creepy Crawlies

We seldom think of insects, bees, and related spiders as endangered; they are so prolific and have such a Biblical pestilential rep, not to speak of stingers that carry quite a (sometimes lethal) wallop to humans. But it's real. And in the case of the mysterious disappearance of pollinating honeybees, their sudden collapse threatens the food chain with profound consequences for human, animal and plant life. It has an unsettling name, "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD, for short), and is a global plague. So it's somehow reassuring to learn that this pretty spider critter in the UK was (a) brought back from the brink of extinction after only 56 such "ladybird" spiders were left, and (b) reintroduced in the wild by dedicated scientists and conservationists into a special bug habitat housing hundreds of species of insects and spiders, many of them endangered. If we don't have such habitats for endangered creepy, crawlies, pretty critters here, maybe we should, for as the honeybees go ... so go we.