Saturday, June 24. I didn’t feel as tired as I should have this morning. I ate breakfast quickly and read over all of our notes. At 8 we turned in our collections, was presented with a hilarious series of cartoon panels, and our identification exam began. After working on my collection for I don’t know how many hours, I better have done well on that exam. After the identification exam came the written exam and it contained stuff from our notes (I’m glad I went over them) and even had a question about Adrea’s research. I feel that I did well in this class. I got my collection back later and I got a 468 our of 475 on it. It turns out that I misidentified an order and two families. Grrrr. Oh well. I had a bunch of additional species that partially made up for it. That’s still a 98.5%. I can’t believe how much work I had to do for this class, but I also can’t believe how much fun I had doing it. I actually didn’t mind working on my insect collection until 11 or later every night. I even actually found insects interesting. I can definitely see myself going into entomology thanks to this class at Stone Lab. Having an awesome professor like Chris and an awesome TA like Adrea helped too. I hope the class I’m taking next week, Geo Sci 107 is even half as much fun as this class.

Friday, June 23. Well, I guess you can say I felt at least some panic at any given moment today over getting this collection done. In the morning it was not so bad. We had our presentations over each of our assigned insects and it turns out that we were all assigned either exotic or endangered insects. Most of the insects on the endangered species list were dragonflies, butterflies, or beetles because they were the most beautiful (unless you hate bugs) so therefore, the most missed. It’s kind of sad to think about all of these insects in our backyards that will never be noticed or missed. That and working on this collection also made me realize that there are a lot of different kinds of insects. So many, in fact, that no one person could ever hope to identify them all. Speaking of which, I identified a few more of my remaining insects that morning and then realized I had very little hope of identifying a lot of the others because they consisted mainly of small flies. That’s when I started feeling a bit more panicky. I was maybe fifteen families short. I went outside to hopefully collect a few more insects and I did catch a different family of wasp, fly and a monarch butterfly. I was very proud of that catch. It was perfect and the wings were undamaged. What could go wrong? I carefully pinned it and spread its wings. Then a few minutes later its abdomen started moving and when I removed the slides over its wings it started flapping. It’s pretty gruesome watching this butterfly trying to fly away when it’s pinned down. It couldn’t fit in the jar because of its wings, so I put it in the freezer. It was most definitely dead an hour later, but I couldn’t get the wings spread like it was before so now I have this beautiful monarch with its wings kind of slumped. Oh well.
The rest of the day and night consisted of either slowly, painfully identifying any remaining families that I had or frantically trying to catch new families on the island. I went so far as to chase the geese by the shore away and collected their feathers in hopes of finding lice. Alas, I found none. In the evening we had the third quiz and it was back to our collections. By midnight, I found fifteen orders, but I was short one family and I was about to give up when lo and behold, a fruit fly lands in front of me. I was never so happy to see a fly in my life. I caught, killed, and pinned it. I spent the rest of the time printing out the labels, labeling the insects, and arranging them in a neat fashion. I was done at around 1. There were two other students. I hope they didn’t stay up too late. I also hope that I’ll have enough time to study tomorrow morning. I can’t believe this class is almost over.

Thursday, June 22. This morning’s lecture covered more insect families (flies, bees, wasps, and ants). After that, Adrea had a nice Powerpoint presentation covering the research that she is currently doing as a grad student at OSU. Her research is to see the reproductive capacity of the African Malaria Vector, Anopheles gambiae (a mosquito). This research is important because malaria affects 300-500 people annually and controlling the mosquito population helps in the fight against malaria. I hope Adrea gets the results she is hoping for.

In the afternoon, it’s back to South Bass. We checked our pitfall traps that we set up on Monday, but they were pretty much destroyed by the storm. Afterwards we went collecting in a field in Captain Al’s property. I got a few new bugs, but the one I’m most proud of is the metallic wood boring beetle. Chris said you find them in the woods. Well, I was kind of close to the woods when this beetle landed on my leg. It kind of startled me and I kind of crushed it, but I got it in the end. It’s really shiny and pretty (well, I think so anyway). The one insect that I’m most frustrated about was the preying mantis that got away from me! I saw it crawling and I went to get it and I lost it! I searched that area for five minutes. They are not very common plus they were a new order and family. Watch me be one order short of the required fifteen. Right before we went back to Gibraltar, we went to the cottage Chris was staying at and we met his wife and three kids. They’re so adorable! They gave us Kool-Aid and ice pops, which was something all of us greatly appreciated after bug catching in the hot weather.

In the evening there were the two guest lectures, a the second quiz (maybe I should have read the handouts Chris gave us), and pinning and labeling. While I was making and printing labels for my insects, I also found out what Mitchell’s Satyr is. It’s an endangered butterfly found in very isolated populations in several states. Since we had only one more day to work on our collections, everyone was staying up late working on it. I was the first to leave, including Chris and Adrea, at midnight. I felt kind of bad, but I was tired. We have all day to work on our collections tomorrow and I have about half of my insects pinned and labeled, so I think I can get it done by Saturday morning. I hope I’m right.

Wednesday, June 21. Well, not much happened today. Unless you count the terrific thunderstorm, but I’ll get to that later. It was rainy this morning and although I should have worked on my insect collection, I just spent the entire morning in my room surfing the web and playing on my DS. I have a feeling I‘m going to regret not working on the project later. In the afternoon, however, I worked a bit on my insect collection. That’s pretty much what I did all day. In the evening there was the thunderstorm. Wow! It was quite amazing. So amazing in fact, that after the quiz (boy was it easy!) Chris let all of us go outside and watch the storm. It was the most beautiful storm I have ever watched! I saw some of the biggest lightening flashes in my life tonight. There were some people stranded on the sailboats in the middle of the lake. I hope they are all right because sailboats have a huge metal thingy sticking from the middle of the boat. That’s bad during a thunderstorm. I have no idea how long we watched the storm until Chris shooed us back in for a brief lecture on some families of beetles, butterflies, and moths. The rest of the night was, of course, spent pinning and identifying the insects. I didn’t get back to my room until almost 11 again, but during the pinning and identifying, I hardly noticed the time passing because we’re not all just sitting there quietly pinning our bugs and looking up what family they belong in. There’s a lot of talking, joking, bug swapping, and laughing going on in our class. This doesn’t feel like a college class at all and I’m glad that I’m in it.

Tuesday, June 20. Collecting trip to Kelley’s Island! After a nice nap on the Gib III, we arrived on Kelley’s Island. We first went to the quarry to collect bugs. Who knew collecting bugs can be so much fun? There was a kind of marshy area there and a lot of toad bugs (and real toads) was found. I found this really nice Tiger Swallowtail, but one of its tails was broken off. Oh well. That’s a new family for me. Dragonflies and non cabbage white butterflies were highly sought after. It’s kind of funny watching big football player Casey chasing after a monarch butterfly across the quarry. We spent a few hours there and it got kind of hot, but I had a lot of fun.

After the quarry, we had and lunch and then went along the beach catching sand insects and eventually we reached a pond stream thingy. I think it drains to the marsh in the quarry. Wow. There were a lot of tadpoles there. I mean a least a thousand. We were catching bugs along the shores of the pond/stream and then we finally waded into the water and went farther in collecting insects. We found a lot of water beetles, whirligigs, and backswimmers. There was also this one beautiful black and white dragonfly that seemed to take great delight in taunting all of us. It would fly down to net height and as hard as we try to catch it, it always flew away. And then it would come back and repeat it. That thing was smarter than we were.

After a couple hours of that, it was ice cream at Uncle Dik’s! I had the wedding cake and it was really good. I also bought a few little boxes of candy. I love candy. A few of us went catching insects in the field next to Uncle Dik’s, but I was too worn out to go catching. Then it was a 30-45 minute boat ride back to Gibraltar. I slept the whole way.

The evening came with a brief lecture about dichotomous keys which could be used to identify insects. It seems pretty straightforward until Chris said that it takes about an hour using a dichotomous key to identify an insect. So we went over the some of the orders and families that we are most likely to find and will also be on the quiz tomorrow. The rest of the evening consisted of pinning, identifying, and/or labeling our days catch. It got kind of rainy and Chris said that it was supposed to storm tomorrow. Because of that, he decided to cancel the plan for tomorrow, which was collecting in the Sandusky River. Swollen rivers are kind of dangerous. Today, I was pinning my insects until around 11, but I had so much fun today that I hardly mind all the work. I’ll be getting a break tomorrow, so it’s not as bad.

Got up bright and early on this Monday, June 19. Thankfully, Chris doesn’t like to lecture for more than an hour. I don’t really like listening to lectures for more than an hour, so that works out. He talked about basic insect anatomy and metamorphosis. Interesting fact: Mayflies are the only insects that go through the subimago stage of metamorphosis. The adults also have no mouths or digestive tracts because they are focused on reproduction only. I thought it was interesting anyway.

Afterwards, Chris talked about all of the collecting techniques. You have the old fashioned net, but then you have all these nifty other things used to collect insects. There’s the Berlaise funnel, used to collect insects in dirt and debris. There’s the light traps and the flying trap and the pitfall. I never really thought about all of the different ways to go bug collecting. After he talked about collection methods, we all grabbed a net and hunted for bugs on Gibraltar. I think I’m off to a fair start. I got a damselfly (not a dragonfly, as I learned), a bee, a wasp, a large ant, and other miscellaneous insects.

In the afternoon, we rode the Gibraltar III to South Bass to do some collecting. We split up into two groups and one went collecting in Terwilliger’s Pond and the other went to the woodlot. I went with the woodlot group and we planted pitfalls and caught bugs. I didn’t get anything too unusual. Then we went to Terwilliger’s Pond. Man I wish I took my shoes and socks off. I did not expect it too be that muddy. My foot got stuck once. It took a while to get it out. We had to cut our collection short because there was lightening. We waited until the Gib III could leave. In the meantime, we hosed off. My socks will never be white again.

In the evening, Chris gave us a handout on all the insect orders. There’s 32 different orders and we want 15 of them. I guess that doesn’t seem so hard. But then you have to consider the ones that are not found in Ohio. Ack. After we went over the handout, Chris went over how to pin and/or preserve your insects. Typically you want to pin them in the upper right region. I don’t know why though. We spent the rest of the evening pinning our insects. It might sound boring, but I found pinning quite relaxing. Adrea said that I’m a good pinner. I wonder if I can get a job pinning insects. Didn’t get done until 10 or so. I wonder if every night is going to be like this.

Sunday, June 18. 6:30-7:30pm. The first class of Entomology 126. I’m not sure if bugs are for me, but hey, that’s why I’m taking this class. Our instructor is Dr. R. Chris Stanton and our TA is Adrea Lovejoy. They both seem pretty cool. Dr. Stanton said we can call him Chris. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.

The class seems pretty straightforward. We are going to learn about insects in the western Lake Erie Region. We have three quizzes, an identification exam, and a written exam. Those combined is worth 40% of our grade. 5% is our participation/attitude and 5% is a casual presentation on an assigned insect. Mine’s the Mitchell’s Satyr. I have no idea what that is, but with the magic of the internet, I’ll guess I’ll find out. The big 50% of our grade is the insect collection. I’m not surprised that we have to do one, but we need 15 different orders and 60 different families! I don’t know if I can do that, but Chris said in past years, students had to collect 70 different families and they managed to do it. That made me feel a bit better. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to snag a mayfly. 59 families to go.
The one bad thing I have to say about this class is that we have class all day! Morning session starts at 8, the afternoon session starts at 1 and the evening session starts at 7:30. I know that this is a week long 3 credit hour college course, but the bird class I took last week didn’t have any night sessions. Oh well.

Sometime after class, I went behind Barney to watch the sunset. Adrea and another student was there. We talked and Adrea said that if you watch the sunset over water, you’ll see a flash of green light when the very top of the sun sinks from the horizon. It was too cloudy tonight to see it, but I’m going to take two more week long classes after this one. I’m bound to see a cloudless sunset. Right?