BIG, ICKY BUGS

This insect graveyard that was made by Amy Rauls is replete with appropriate headstones for the dearly departed bugs.

Sean Riches showed his insect collection in the form of the Madam Butterfly Theatre.

Sean Riches doesn't like bugs much, especially the big, icky ones he had to collect as part of a sixth-grade science project at Franklin Elementary School.

But Riches made the most of his project by transforming his collection of grasshoppers, gypsy moths and bumblebees into the cast and audience of a performance of "Madam Butterfly," staring a swallowtail butterfly, pinned to the cardboard stage.

Seated in the egg carton balcony was the prized gypsy moth, Riches' favorite. A bumblebee usher patrolled the theater looking for rowdy crickets, who apparently had tossed popcorn on the floor.

"It was really tricky to catch them," Riches said. "I don't really like to pick them up. I don't really like bugs."

But he has a new appreciation for insects and their place in the environment, explained teacher Mark Cook. Sixth graders study the environment and the food chain, of which "insects are at the bottom."

Students also learn lessons about classification of living things and what specifically makes an insect (six legs and a segmented body).

A bonus, Cook said, is that parents and families join the bug hunt. Students have to collect at least 20.

"It get's them working together," he said.

Once when Jon Everly was playing in the woods he found a large mushroom cap. "I thought it would look neat in my room," he said. So he brought it home.

When he got the insect assignment, Everly decided to use the mushroom cap as the base for his display.

"I tried to make everything as realistic as possible," he said.

Hidden among the foliage was a walking stick and a praying mantis. Caterpillars climbed up the side and a Monarch butterfly perched on a stem.

"It was pretty hard to find and catch all these bugs," Everly said. He and his mother and her friend searched in woods and fields and the backyard.

"You know, some bugs are not bugs," he explained. "Spiders aren't bugs. They're arachnids, but they eat bugs."

However, he wasn't sure what real value bugs serve other than food. "I've heard that ladybugs are good luck," he said.

Amy Rauls and her dad looked at the collection of dead bugs collected from the backyard and decided the most appropriate display would be a graveyard.

She wrote epitaphs for the bugs including one for a housefly that died "buzzing around," for a mosquito, "This sucker's gone," and the praying mantis "didn't pray long enough."

Rauls said she and her dad found some of the best dead bugs in car radiators, including a large dragonfly.

"I kind of like bugs better now that I found out more stuff," she said. "They are neat to watch and see what they'll do next."