The New York Times’ Saki Knafo interviewed Lou for a feature, The Man Who Lets the Bedbugs Bite, that is truly wonderful.
Bed bugs are prominent, but for once I want to set them aside and enjoy Lou’s work and interests.
This is Lou on his boyhood in Rye Brook:
I collected butterflies, beetles, wasps, bees, ants, things that were easily seen. Then, as I grew older, I’d see if I could find smaller stuff. I’d look in leaf litter and under rocks and logs, or in logs. Or bark — I’d take it apart and see what was going on.
I liked watching things metamorphose. If you collected a cicada as a nymph coming out of the ground and you watched it split open and an adult crawled out, that was very interesting.
I hope the day will come, soon, when we simply talk to Lou about goblin spiders and beautiful cicadas, even perhaps insect gastronomy, rather than bed bugs.