I love my niece and nephew

[urbpan]

And they love bugs! (and other stuff)


My brother's children visited New England this summer, from Las Vegas.

Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are old hat!




The whole family held the corn snake.





Then we went out to the crop fields--what are they picking?



Potato beetles!



When they came to my neighborhood, Duncan found a really big gypsy moth caterpillar!



Frankie liked it too.



They seemed to have a knack for finding big insects! You don't usually see big beetles like this in Boston!



Duncan worked hard at extricating a dinosaur from this pink rock, sawing away until the rock turned to dust.



See?



Ever-ready to discover nature in unusual places, they locate an insect in the aisle of Target!



They even found a rare Lorax, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Comments

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

From my observations of the hundreds of kids that we do outreaches for, young children aren't afraid of and actively enjoy looking at and touching the bugs. It's not until about the 3rd or 4th grade that the kids, particularly the girls, start to recoil and fear them. I'm not sure whether that's a reflection fo socialization, or just life experiences like finding earwigs in the bathroom or roaches in the pantry. Oftentimes, our most fearful patrons are parents or other adult chaperones.

bug icon

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

Frankie wants to know what kind of bug that is in your icon

Re: bug icon

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

It's an ermine moth, family Yponomeutidae. I took the picture in Dominica, West Indies. However, I know the family (and I'm pretty sure this species) is distributed throughout much of the continental US.