The Insect Collection/School Project

Each September when the neighborhood kids start heading off to school I have the same re-occurring nightmare. Giant insects that have morphed into hideous human size monsters fly out of my freezer and chase me through the house and yard with huge insect nets. It’s like a scene from a bad late night science fiction movie. It might be called “Revenge of the Insect Collection.” I wake up in great relief, and with a chuckle, to realize it is only a warped, twisted memory from years ago.

When my youngest son was going into ninth grade he was lucky enough to have a science teacher who cared. To be sure his students did not waste their summer idling around the house watching too much television or wasting away in front of the Nintendo set, he devised a plan. This was a teacher with a passion and a purpose. The purpose was to lure his students out into the sunshine and fresh air, to explore the wonders of nature. His plan had a name. It was called the insect collection!

The assignment was to find, collect, and mount at least 60 different insects on a display board. It was due the middle of October. The last week of the school year, before summer break, each student was issued an insect net, a Styrofoam display board, and specific instructions on how to make a “kill jar” using cotton balls soaked in acetone free nail polish remover. They also received directions on how to pin and display the summer’s work.

When you are an eighth grader finally set free from the stuffy classrooms of school, fall is a LONG time away, and the summer stretching in front of you looks like eternity. Needless to say the insect net and all the other paraphernalia got stuffed in a corner of my son’s bedroom along with a happily discarded backpack and some dirty P.E. clothes. After all, there would be plenty of time to collect those insects.

Not to say the insect net did not see any action those first few weeks. It was still a fun novelty at this point. Along with my son, curious friends, siblings and cousins could not resist giving it a try. Hey, it was fun to run through the back yard and see if you could catch anything. And so easy…all you had to do was catch the insect, transfer it to the kill jar, and then put it in a zip-loc bag in the freezer for safe keeping until you were ready to mount the collection. If you were really in a hurry, another alternative was just to put the live insect in a zip-loc bag, place it in the freezer, and use the kill jar before mounting.

The only trouble with this was the bugs kind of got mixed up after awhile. When you opened the freezer they all looked pretty much the same and it became increasingly difficult to differentiate between the dormant and the dead. Surprisingly, insects CAN come back to life after weeks of deep sleep in the deep freeze…thus my nightmare!

One year the custodian at school entered the science room at night to hear a ghastly sound. It was a mounted insect buzzing around and around on some student’s Styrofoam board. Evidently it was not quite as dead as it had appeared when pinned to the collection board.

Near the end of June we looked in the freezer and counted nearly twenty zip-loc bags. It is kind of creepy to open the deep freeze and come face to face with an assortment of beady-eyed insects staring at you. It can also be a bit unappetizing when you are thinking of something to thaw for dinner.

Summer seems long, but it goes fast. Before long June had turned into the middle of July. What self respecting teenager thinks about homework in July? There was still plenty of time to catch those insects.

Suddenly it was August and time to get serious. By now the entire family and all friends, relatives, and unsuspecting visitors were recruited to help find insects. If nothing else, we put on a great show for the neighbors. Imagine children, teenagers and grown adults running around the yard with insect nets in hand shouting “Hey, I almost got it!” Or “You’ve got to see these wings!” We had all been infected with the “insect bug.” Our family was becoming a source of never ending amusement to the neighborhood.

It was also making us weird. I remember being invited to an outdoor neighborhood party and in the middle of eating refreshments I suddenly jumped from my seat, ran toward the rosebushes and caught a giant bumble bee with my bare hands. I then stuffed it in my empty punch cup and ran for home…all this with no explanation. We were becoming obsessive!

With thirty insects in the deep freeze and thirty more to be found, September was gaining on us fast. Before we knew it the lazy, long days of summer had turned into the busy, short days of fall. School was in session, which meant multiple homework assignments and after school activities.

Mid September and my son still needed twenty more insects to complete his collection.

Lunch hour at school became “hunt for insect’s hour.” It wasn’t easy. You had to compete with every other ninth grader in school looking to complete his collection. We needed new territory. After school hours turned into family field trips to various locations…Utah Lake, open fields, or wherever we thought bugs might lurk.

Until that year I never noticed how quickly it became dark in the evening. With the cooler fall temperatures all the insects that seemed to be swarming everywhere in the summer heat suddenly became scarce.

My husband quit asking what we were having for dinner. He knew better than to ask. Who had time for dinner? We only had time to catch bugs! Besides there was no room anymore for food in the freezer, it had turned into an insect morgue. The kitchen table became a science exhibit, spread with insect paraphernalia and mounting boards. It was all too fragile to move for dinner. I was starting to think my son’s science teacher had a darker hidden agenda when he came up with this assignment….drive your entire family to distraction.

In October full fledged panic set in. Ten more insects to find and where in the world had they all gone? My son got creative. In the evening when it got dark we turned on all the lights in the house and opened every window and door, hoping SOMETHING would fly in. His grandpa donated a bug-zapper to the cause which sat on our patio table outside the kitchen door entrance. If we couldn’t get them into the house, we’d cut them off at the pass. If our neighbors thought we were weird before, we now removed all doubt.

As we all stood posted at various sentinels in the house armed with insect nets and zip-loc bags we decided it couldn’t hurt to rearrange the furniture. With any luck we might find a dead spider or two under the sofa. We were becoming desperate.

How had it come to this? Our entire life had become a quest to collect insects. Everything else was of no consequence.

I don’t remember how those last ten insects were finally found. I just know I felt a sense of relief and yes, pride, as we toured the science room on back to school night. It was where most of the parents seemed to gather and stay. You could hear things like, “Oh, I helped catch this one….remember the night we found that dragonfly? Wow…look at the wings on this kid’s butterfly! This one is MY son’s collection…would you look at that?”

My son’s science teacher looked on with a satisfied smile. Mission accomplished.

I determined right then and there that next summer I was going to take some time to relax….and maybe even watch some T.V.