“I think our phobias are misplaced,'' said Stewart in the interview. "People get really worked up over a bug that might gross them out but doesn’t really do much harm. And then they’ll be very cavalier about something like a mosquito that’s actually quite deadly....It is mosquitoes that should send you running in terror, at least in certain parts of the world."

In her judgment, bedbugs are so overrated. "They don’t transmit any disease that we know of,'' she says. (Though, of course, that begs the question: Are there any about which we don't know?) And though cockroaches are "movable garbage trucks" that can carry Hepatitis and e-coli, she sees them little more as pests. "You can’t sort of blame it for showing up and eating, I mean that’s just what bugs do." The lowly centipede? They're actually good to have around because they eats bedbugs and roaches.

Stewart's book explores the mundane and the monstrous of the insect world, including those that are eaten by the females during sex. "With the Praying Mantis, she can turn around and bite his head off and he will still finish the act,'' she says.

Stewart, says Andrew Alexander in Atlanta's Creative Loafing, "has the ability to make natural history and entomology vivid. She's also a great story-teller, bringing to life the troubling encounters of mankind with insects."

"Wicked Bugs is a great book to help keep your mind off your real worries,'' concludes Alexander. "Instead of getting distressed over your finances, love life, the environment, world politics and so on, now you can start having anxiety attacks about biting midges, stinging caterpillars, and brown recluses. ...Good times!"