INSECTS, Yup, the Buggy type—

About 20 of us from near toddlers to near toddlers (that’s both ends of the age spectrum) enjoyed a recent program put on by Merrill Tawse at The Gorman Nature Center near Mansfield.

The opening piece of his program informed us, “With over 700,000 known varieties, insects outnumber all the rest of the plants and animals in the world combined”.

Some studies favor the staggering figure of about six to ten million varieties including estimates of those yet descovered.

Tawse delighted the audience when he had some boisterous young boys in the front row believing they would have to use their pants pockets to haul our soon to be caught specimens back for examination.

“You’ll have to be especially careful with the BIG bumble bees,” he intoned. The boys giggled.

Before leaving on a hike through the center’s expansive acreage we were treated to a lesson on how to successfully employ an insect net and stow our captured “bugs” in some scientific specimen containers; small zip-lock bags.

He usually wrinkled his nose when someone used that horribly casual term, “Bugs.”

Soon our expedition was scurrying throug the trails and into the tall weeds with nets being deployed with suprising success. “Oh, that’s a such and such,” Tawse exuded, and, “Ahh, look there, she has a Splifflewhizzit,” he smiled.

Actually, I couldn’t write fast enough to accurately record the census of our capture as identified by the encyclopedic Tawse.

But, it included butterflys and beetles and bees, and, those marvelous dragon and damsel flies as we worked around the edge of a pond.

He always insured the critters were handled gently then sent on their way when the curiosity of the fledgling entomoligsts, young and old alike, was satisfied.

There are more than 300,000 species of beetles alone, easily topping the list of varieties.

Insects are usually easy to tell from their other “buggy” counterparts. Their body consists of three elements, a head, thorax and abdomen. They sport two antennae and six legs. They do not have lungs but breathe through a series of tiny holes along the abdomen.

You learn things like that when you tag along on one of these marvelous GNC programs.