Yesterday afternoon Sweet Neighbor Girl came over with a burning request: "Will you help me find some bugs?"Now, I've always been a buggy kind of gal so I leaped at the opportunity.
"What do you need bugs for?"
"My Girl Scout meeting after school Monday."
"Dead or alive?"
"Either."
"Well, it's getting a little late in the season, but I bet we can find some." Where was she a few months ago when the Killer Cicadas were over-populating underneath my patio?
For collection purposes she had a little Tupperware-type bowl, which already contained two deceased locusts from her little brother's special summer collection, so she was already off to a great start. We headed to one of my garden areas, unearthed some rocks, and found a roly-poly and a beetle in no time. She screamed at the little spider she spotted, a la Little Miss Muffet, so we let it escape.
This whole experience gave me flashbacks of high school biology class when Mr. Jontra sent our class of budding scientists to the South Mound on a scavenger hunt to to locate creepy crawlers and vegetation that were pre-assigned various points. Everyone on my team was hell-bent on rounding up a scorpion since it was worth 15 points and required climbing down into the nether regions of the Mound, out of the teacher's sight, of course, and turning over rocks the size of small boulders. A true exercise in cooperative learning. Schools nowadays would likely nix such expeditions because of liability rules. Some parents just don't want to let their kids roll around in poison ivy or get stung by scorpions. Geesh. What's wrong with them?
Anyway, Sweet Neighbor Girl has today to finish up on her bug search. I'm glad I'm not the scout leader who gets the privilege of viewing all the critters, still crawling or belly-up, that are submitted by the troop-sters for their project. I think I'd just be inclined to give them all a merit badge with no questions asked, bust open a few boxes of thin mints and do-si-dos, and celebrate a job well done.
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