Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Looking for Trouble

After dinner I decided to follow up on a tip someone gave in class about these really really large moths that seem to come out about dusk at the soccer field. I asked some of my male buddies if they would mind going with me, since the soccer field is a ways out and I didn't want to be walking around by myself after dark. Besides, more eyes means better chances of finding something, right?

So we make it out to the field carrying my butterfly net and jar-o-doom, and there's absolutely nothing there. Well, now the guys just want to see my killing jar in action, so we make our way to the tennis courts and I find a winged ant. I told them that the bugs just act really high and then pass out, end eventually die of an OD on the chemical. They thought my analogy was hilarious, and watched the ant very intently giving of-the-moment interpretative narrative. "Oh no! My legs! Ack ack, ahhh....." They were so amused that they walked around a whole section of campus with me from lit spot to lit spot looking for interesting things to kill. We found a mosquito hawk/crane fly (the giant mosquito kind, not the dragonfly kind), a huge beetle, a big cricket, and several moths. There also seemed to be another green stink bug every time we turned around. They seemed to be everywhere tonight.

We also found a big green grasshopper that I happened to know from personal experience has the most scary looking mandibles, so I picked it up and showed the guys, who agreed they don't want to be bit by that! So, we proceded to find a worthy-looking spider web and deposited the grasshopper there, hoping to get a death-match going, but the spider didn't look game. It was more along the lines of, "what are you doing to my web?"

Walking around having fun with my freinds: it's great and I wish I did it more often.

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