PROBLEM: Mosquitoes and other bugs are driving you crazy!

BUG: Praying mantis

HUH? When it comes to snagging flies, mosquitoes, or other pests, this mantis has the moves. Its front legs shoot out fast enough to snatch a bug in the time it takes you to blink!

Some gardeners put praying mantis eggs in their gardens. Hundreds of small mantids (plural of mantis) hatch — and hundreds of plant — eating bugs go down the hatch! When all the pests are gone, the mantids fly off to another spot for an all-you-caneat bug buffet.

Gardeners also buy ladybugs and other environmentally friendly pest killers. They're much quieter than bug zappers!

PROBLEM: You didn't clean a cut, and now it's badly infected.

RESCUE BUG: Maggots (newly-hatched flies-or fly larvae-that have worm-like bodies)

HUH? Like all babies, maggots need lots of food so they can grow up. A maggot's favorite treat: rotten or infected flesh.

Before they had powerful medicines, some doctors used maggots to cure infections. Today, some infection-causing bacteria are too strong for medicines to clear up. So a few doctors are putting fly larvae back to work.

Doctors place up to 800 of the rice-sized critters on a wound. The maggots ooze out chemicals that turn the infected flesh to liquid, and slurp it up.

Presto: No more infection!