Catching Insects

Spark is going to be doing an insect study this year and, because we never know when the first frost is going to hit, we started collecting the bugs.

We found that the best way to catch them is to run with a net along the grass and weeds and then stop after about 10 - 15 feet and shake whatever you got into a Ziploc baggie.

For those insects that are calmly on a leaf it worked to put the bag over the leaf and gently scrape them into the bag. 

Spark kept all his super scientific equipment in this super scientific case disguised as a gift bag.

To keep the bugs in good shape he put the bugs in freezer to kill them.  One thing we found out was that with more than one bug in a bag, because those bag are too expensive for each bug to have their our, we set up a perfect confined food chain.  This was especially true of the bags that had ants, dragon flies and spiders in them.  They started eating each other.  And yes, we know that spiders aren't insects but it will be way easier to sort them out when they are frozen than trying to coax them out before and risk letting other bugs go.