Our little scientist called to me that there was a spider on her slide. Most two year old girls would squeal and run away but not Katherine. She wanted mommy to come see it. Well it was not a spider but a dried out shell or carcass of some kind of insect. I was a science teacher but bugs were not my specialty. I am not sure if this one is actually deceased or if it outgrew it's shell and left it behind. The good thing was that Katherine did not know the difference and since there was not a moving, living insect, it was much easier to look at.
Ooooh mommy, look!
I show it to baby.
After the excitement of the bug wore off we ate dinner and just played. Katherine explored her new sandbox but since it does not have any sand yet it was pretty boring.
3 comments:
Cicada skin. We always called them katydids when I was a kid - and I spent hours each summer hunting down the shed skins - the bug keeps living. And your old tree had TONS of them for us to find last summer - another reason to be sad you lost it. They're pretty cool bugs, and the source of most of the "summer bug" symphony in summer evenings. Happy hunting! (for your scientist side - wikepedia has a good article.)
Yeah, it's just the shed skin from a cicada. My parents had a chain-link fence in their backyard where I always found lots of cicada skins. I collected them in a ziploc sack every summer. When the sack was full I'd put it in my dresser drawer. (Of course, my treasure soon turned to just cicada skin crumbles.) The cicada insect itself does not bite or sting. If you hold it just right by the wings it can't fly away, yet it still makes a very loud noise suitable for scaring little sisters. Not that I would know anything about that, of course. :-)
I saw tons of these as a kid in East Texas...I always called them Locusts.
Cool! I hadn't seen one of these in ages!
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