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.