​On Monday, a few staffers (including myself) drove up Calistoga Road from Santa Rosa, then onto St. Helena Road into Napa County. We parked in a beautiful canyon and hiked up to a peak in Mt. Hood Regional Park.
 
A mini-swarm of bordered plant bugs joined us on our hike — at least, that’s what I think they were. Resembling beetles with orange or red edges, these are, in fact, true bugs. Most of us call anything smaller than our finger — or just kind of ugly — a ‘bug.’ This is terminology that entomologists hate because ‘bug’ is a specific term relating only to true bugs of the order Hemiptera. These things typically crawl on the ground but, on this day, many of them were flying around awkwardly, looking somewhat like a little gnat carrying a desiccated pomegranate seed and occasionally smacking into our cheeks and foreheads. Alfred Hitchcock would have thought them pretty cool, but probably not scary enough to warrant making a film starring them.
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