And if you close your eyes, you won't notice that they have legs. And antennae. And some even still have wings.

Welcome to entomologist Zack Lemann's wonderful world of bug cookery, where dozens of varieties of crawly creatures aren't your average everyday pests - they're breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sounds too disgusting to be true?

Think again. This New Orleans scientist is trying to make Americans realize what other cultures the world over have known for a long time: Bugs can be tasty little treats.

"A slew of countries in the developing world, the Far East, Asia, Australia, Central Africa - all these folks eat bugs," said Lemann. "A lot of this is what you're used to and getting people to try something new. The idea of adding this thing that it is unusual and typically thought of as a pest and not a meal is a tough hump to get over, but I think we are slowly getting people to realize it is OK."

Lemann, a program manager for the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans - and creator of the museum's cooking demonstration center, "Bug Appetit" - will bring his creepy culinary delights to the Academy of Natural Sciences for this weekend's Bug Fest 2008. On Saturday and Sunday, at 12:15 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., he'll be chatting about munching everything from ants to waterbugs, and offering cooking demonstrations with some of his favorite treats, like big juicy dragonflies. (For more details about Bugfest see www.ansp.org/bugfest.)

We talked with Lemann to find out more about this, ahem, unusual culinary obsession, and to learn whether we, too, could possibly come to appreciate house pests, garden nuisances and annoying flying friends on our plates instead of our swatters.

Q. First question right off the bat: Is it safe to eat these things you are cooking?

A. It certainly seems to be safe. If you look at the history of the human consumption of insects past and present in various cultures, you very rarely have incidence of allergic reactions and that [would be] the main thing to worry about. The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] allows a certain number of bug parts in all sorts of foods that we eat all the time. So we've all ingested enough bugs that if we had allergies we would know about it. But there is evidence to suggest that if a person is allergic to shellfish, there may be iodine in the exoskeleton of the insects that could cause a reaction.

Q. How did you gain this unusual culinary talent?

A. It began when the Audubon Louisiana Nature Center became operational back in 1997, and the education director called and said we are doing an edible event. He said, "You're the bug guy to do this." But I said I've never cooked them before. So I called some other people who had been cooking insects a lot longer than I have: two ladies in Massachusetts and Arizona. I knew them, they were colleagues in the business and they told me what to do. We tested a bunch of recipes at the nature center and said, "Hey, this stuff is good - we can serve it to people." It got local and national press and landed me on "The Tonight Show" in 1997. Over the next couple of years I was on national shows. We are trying to point out that lots of other cultures do this and it can be tasty. I've always seen entomology as a way to get people to value insects. This is just one of the hooks I use.

Q. So how do you prepare these insects to cook? And how do you cook them?

A. Typically I will freeze them first, then you can stir-fry them, boil them, bake them, batter them. I get the bugs from a commercial operation [on the Internet]. You don't expose them to high heat too quickly or the bugs will pop. The basic rule of thumb is to add bugs to a dish as a part of it. So take a recipe that calls for nuts, fruit and things that are chopped up, and replace that with insects. If you're making pasta with ham and peas, go ahead and add some bugs instead of peas.

Q. So what's one of your favorite dishes?

A. My signature dish is odonate hors d'ouevres. We recently picked up 160 dragonflies - nobody raises dragonflies, you have to be quick to catch them. You need a good aerial net and you need to be fast about it. There are times we go out in the swamps and they are over the water.

Another recipe is the chocolate-chip cricket cookies. They are wildly popular - everyone loves them. Some people are hesitant to expand their gastronomic horizons and to get over that hump, so we hide the texture and flavor of the insects with other flavors. But sometimes there is someone who feels cheated and says, "I didn't taste the bug," so I give them some crispy Cajun crickets the next time.

Q. Everyone is going to be wondering: What do these things all taste like?

A. Most insects have a nutty flavor more than anything else. Crickets are like sunflower seeds, and dragonflies taste like soft-shell crabs. Most of these things are largely taking on the flavor of what you are cooking them in.

Q. Have bugs ever made you sick?

A. No, absolutely not, but there is one insect I am allergic to and that is mealworms.

Q. In developing countries people eat bugs mostly out of necessity. Why bother to do this here when we have plenty of other foods to eat?

A. It's something new to try. You get every reaction under the sun. [Most people] want to do it because it is novel and relatively safe. *

For more information about Zack Lemann and his culinary mission, go to www.auduboninstitute.org.