A scientist travels across North America in search of a rare beetle, collecting stories along the way.

A boy finds a mysterious caterpillar-like creature in the forest one day. He brings it home and kills it to add to his wildlife collection, but becomes haunted by creatures he can no longer control.

When a bartender discovers that bug bites give him dreams, he attempts to solve his marital problems by making his wife experience the dreams with him.

When an extraterrestrial bug bites a space explorer in the arm, a comical medical emergency replete with amputations and miscommunications ensues.

An initially unwanted infestation fosters understanding between a woman and the cockroaches in her house.

An old man tells his grandson a story about a crazy Jesuit who used to preach to cockroaches.

After a retired inventor becomes widowed, he decides to take Latin classes and falls for his teacher despite his grief and hesitations.

In modern-day China, a cohort of wasps skilled in cartography establishes a new colony, exercising their suppressive rule over a local beehive. One anarchist bee makes inroads into the wasp colony, setting in motion a subversion of the wasp monarchy and a new, pioneering generation of anarchist bees.

When a graduate student makes his way to Colorado with his recently unemployed girlfriend to visit his married friends, an alarming development in his friends’ marriage causes him to reevaluate his own relationship and, in the process, make a grave mistake.

When a sixty-nine-year old high school teacher's elm tree is infested with insects, the man does everything he can to save the tree, even going so low as to sabotage his neighbor.