Sara’s Insect Unit has come to its dramatic conclusion with the completion of her diorama, a report, and a field trip to the Insectarium at the Cincinnati Zoo. Those aren’t drum rolls you hear…that’s the sound of me cracking a beer and falling into the couch after chaperoning 40 1st graders across state lines on a 10 hour field trip. Take 40 kids who have been intensively studying bugs for over a month, and then take them into a building so replete with bugs, if you moved fast, it would take you over an hour to see it all. We could have fed these kids an Easter basket full of chocolate, met the real Tooth Fairy, and introduced them to Phineas and Ferb…wouldn’t have been half as exciting as seeing Walking Sticks as long as my leg. They went…NUTS.
THIS is the famous Buckeye Butterfly that we’ve heard so much about. As you can see, he can’t decide if he’s going to eat the Cosmos, a Petunia, or a piece of watermelon, all representative of his primary food sources. He’s happiest on the ground, where he blends into the dirt, and with those wings open, the big dots scare off predators. He also attracts mates more easily on the ground. His straw is unfurled, which he also uses for “puddling”, which means, to drink out of a mud source. Sara carefully inserted 2 sources of mud. Buckeye Butterflies don’t drink clear water. He might be eaten by that spider, one of his primary predators. I JUST DON’T KNOW…it’s quite suspenseful. It’s summer, which means this guy migrated up from the south, but he won’t migrate back down before winter, and he’ll die. He can’t eat that spider. He’s an herbivore. If that spider bites off half his wing? He can still fly.
And that is 1/3’rd of her diorama. Because Sara apparently has found her one true bug love. The only thing I did in this project was make that watermelon and hot glue on the felt. Sara did the rest herself, and I wish you could have seen the look on her face when she carried it into school. There’s just nothing better than trying your best. Sorry, I digressed into Momma pride…on with our lecture:
The chrysalis is being eyed by a stinkbug, and she is planning on discussing how deforestation is killing butterflies, because when a tree falls, the leaves fall, and there goes a perfectly good chrysalis. That chrysalis is an exact representation of a Buckeye Butterfly Chrysalis. Did you know they look different? I didn’t. The Buckeye Butterfly Caterpillar has also just puddled, eaten a bit of snapdragon, and is crawling across some rocks (again, his habitat), trying to escape from that crazy bird, also a predator.
After our insect tour at the Zoo, we had the run of the place on this beautiful 72 degree day (did I MENTION how much I love a Midwestern fall?), and I couldn’t get my group of students out of the Rainbow Lorikeet exhibit. The birds calmly sat on our arms and ate right out our hands. It was such giggly fun. I wrote to a friend who had a student in my group and she replied, “Isn’t that prophetic?” YES! That was the exact word I was trying to to find.
Does anyone remember this face from exactly a year ago? Sara was assigned a vertebrate report on the Rainbow Lorikeet, and only because I suggested it, thinking she would enjoy it. She would only specify that she wanted to report on anything “not mammal”, because apparently, Sara can’t stand the study of mammals. To this day, she has stood by that story. “Not mammal” lacks specificity in the animal kingdom…I did my best. She seemed mildly enthusiastic about the idea, and I made a full costume for virtual zoo day at school. This was her face. ALL DAY. She wanted NOTHING to do with that bird and certainly not the costume.
So today? Watching Sara laugh and feed a Rainbow Lorikeet after spending 14 days talking about nothing but that Buckeye Butterfly? Today was prophetic.
Because just as butterflies have life cycles, so do children. Yesterday’s funk will turn into tomorrow’s giggle, and maybe, if we’re lucky, will be next year’s celebration. They change so fast, while we stew in our adult sameness, fretting they won’t outgrow things they MUST outgrow with almost 100% certainty. Unless your child gets eaten by a stinkbug, it will eventually come out of that chrysalis. Or so I think. What do I know? I’m just the chaperone who broke up not 1, not 2, but 3 snack throwing fights on the bus, and after a day at a Zoo with that many kids? I smell like a goat. I’m kind of glad the insect unit is over. I’m just not sure I can talk or think about bugs for one more day. OH GOD HELP ME, I just remembered. Kelly started her Spider, Owls and Bats Unit yesterday. ‘Scuse me…I think I need another beer…