2010 Insect-O-Rama

The 3rd annual Insect-O-Rama was held last Saturday (9/11) at the MDC NW Regional Office in St. Joseph. We had approximately 100 people in attendance, which was down from the previous two years. Even with such a low turn out I was extremely pleased with how things went. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and we had absolutely gorgeous weather to have such a large special event.

Joe and Heather are two of our new volunteers taking the current naturalist course. This was there very first event to volunteer at and poor Joe just couldn't keep his eyes open....hehehe

 

Heather is another new volunteer who handled the Giant Hissing Cockroaches like a pro.

The kids enjoyed racing their roach of choice down the tracks.

Georgia helps a little girl coax her roach into racing

 

 Our Beekeepers got into the theme of things and talked about the importance of Honey Bees to us Humans.

Missouri chose the Honey Bee as their state insects in spite of the fact that they aren't native. What a great choice! Honey Bees are one of the hardest working of all insects, which I think typifies Missourians.

 

Scott is our fisheries biologist, he set up by the pond and let the kind use nets to find aquatic insects. Dylan is a new volunteer this year who assisted him.

 

Lots of interesting things come out of the pond...wonder what this is?

Our Insect Chef brought a lot of Tasty treats to try....stir fried hornworm, General Tso crickets, junebugs and grasshoppers, fried cicadas and mealworm cookies.

 

Here I am picking out a nice juicy june bug to sample. Yum!

My young friend next to me is Trevor, and after much coaxing and teasing we finally were able to get him to try some too.

Bottoms up!

Hornworms are a bit CHEWY!!

This is Paul our Insect Chef and next to him is Bryan one of our new volunteers. We caught Bryan more than once sampling the tasty bugs...LOL

Ella the Tarantula even got in on the fun, she was a huge hit with the kids. Many of them wanted to hold her, including a cute little 3 year old named Sydney.

Two little boys weren't about to be shown up by a wee little girl. It was time for them to get their hands on Ella.

These are our Butterfly Ladies. Linda raises all sorts of Moths and Butterflies. Joyce (brown shirt) raises monarchs, and Betsy (sitting) is the author of "Butterflies of Kansas City, a Photographic Field Guide". Her books is wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone in the midwest, you certainly do not have to be living in KC to benefit from it.

 What a sense of wonder for this little girl, an experience she won't soon forget. Being able to release a newly emerged monarch.

Many more people helped to make this years event the success that it was. I want to thank each and everyone one of them. Without them we could not do it! I hope we have many more years of Insect-O-Rama and the opportunity to teach the public about the wonderful world of BUGS!