How many uses are there for a bug? This came up the other day during a conversation with a Russian colleague who, despite having excellent English, was baffled by its abundance of bug metaphors.


"To bug" can mean "to bother" or "to install listening devices." In U.S. street slang "to bug" can mean "to feel badly."


To "de-bug" means "to remove the flaws from a computer program," while "the bug" can be anything from the flu to the lingering intestinal effects of the lagman soup you ate at that Uzbek restaurant last night.


All this left our Russian friend dizzily scribbling down notes and set us wondering about obscure animal metaphors in our own target language.


We found a bug as soon as we started looking: Zhuchok, or a little beetle, is the Russian equivalent of that listening device.


Often, animal metaphors refer to some trait that does not immediately come to mind. For example, what do you associate with a beetle? Asked this question, non-Russians answered "little black bug," "hard," "crunchy" and "too close to a roach for comfort." No one said "clever and resourceful."


But in Russian, a zhuk refers to a person who is always finding clever ways to get in and out of situations (presumably because of the way a beetle digs).


Along with resourceful beetles, Russian has greedy toads and tragically well-meaning bears.


Say you ask your friend for a bite of his Snickers bar, and he does not respond right away, but you can see from his expression that he wants to eat the candy bar all by himself. Here you can say zhaba davit, the toad is putting the pressure on. The origin of this expression, which seems to be common only among younger generations, is hard to explain, but if you can imagine a greedy little toad that lives in people's souls, then you understand the image.


To understand the term medvezhya usluga, a bear's favor, you have to refer to a Russian folk tale:


One day a bear saw a fly land on the head of his friend the farmer, who was slumbering in a field. Forgetting his strength, the bear slapped at the fly, killing his friend as well.


Medvezhya usluga has been used to refer to the favor the people at Ostankino television did for their friend Yegor Gaidar before last December's parliamentary elections, when they ran a full-length documentary on what a bad guy Vladimir Zhirinovsky was. The problem was that the film portrayed Zhirinovsky in far too positive a light.


The next day, millions came out and voted for him.