It's been buggin' me

In sixth grade we all knew about the dreaded insect collection that would be required the following year. It loomed large in many of our minds. How would we ever find 60 (ish) bugs to mount? How would we suck it up to catch, store, identify, and pin them all in those cardboard boxes (without knocking off limbs or heads)? More accurately, how would we convince anyone to do it for us? Especially the beetles!

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Our neighborhood was still under construction, and there were plenty of fields that positively hummed with insects in the summer. In fact they'd smack into you and your bike as you rode through, leaving welts behind. Mostly I remember the grasshoppers, Japanese beetles, and the occasional iridescent green beetles. A green beetle would surely get me an A! 

I remembered the other day in the shower (though why I was thinking about it in the shower I'm not sure) that there was a rumor we weren't supposed to catch and mount a praying mantis because they were an endangered species or something. I just looked it up and they're not. Wonder where that rumor started? Did you know that they are most closely related to termites and cockroaches? I'm so over my fascination with them now. Cockroaches. Yuck.

To be honest, I couldn't have finished the project without Dee. She did the grosser parts that I couldn't and provided the moral support. Even so, walking into the class the day the insect collections were due, I scribbled my name on the boxes and walked away from them filled with a huge sense of accomplishment and relief. From a box of bugs.