When Michael Stipe was a child, living in a modest house on Medlock Lane, in Decatur, Georgia, he liked to go in the yard and play with roly-polies. These tiny garden creatures, sometimes known as pill bugs or armadillo bugs, are not actually bugs at all, but small crustaceans that feed on decomposed plant matter. They’re best known, though — at least, to anyone who has ever spent time playing in the dirt — for their natural defense mechanism: When touched or frightened, roly-polies curl into a tight ball.
