Super Big Beetle

My Papa brought him to our house one day. He found the beetle on his driveway. It's huge! It's probably like two inches long. This is a close up picture. The beetle was so fast we had to put him in a container to get pictures of him. He's fast for a big beetle. Then I let him go in the backyard. He may still be living in the backyard today.

Ant Colony

When I was turning over rocks in our front flowerbed and looking for interesting stuff like snails, I found a ton of ants and their brood under one rock. The ants were running around like crazy and some were carrying eggs and stuff. They were going either into the grass or into the ground. They were just scared, probably. In one picture there is a big ant, it might be a soldier or the queen.

Karina Guest Post, Strange Bug

At first when I catched it, it looked like a praying mantis. I catched it in my brother's bug net. And I got it in the jar by trying to scoop it up but he escaped, but then when my Dad said it might be probably dinner time I collected my stuff and the bug jumped in my jar right as I was closing the lid. He is green and brown. He jumps and my Mom took a picture of it so I could guest post about it for my brother. I'm going to keep him for a couple days and my aunt, I bet, is going to read my post. Like Aunt Stephie.

Baby Spiderlings

This is the first time I have ever seen baby spiders. I think they're really cute and my dad saw the Mom spider on the lawnmower when he was getting it out. He put it in a jar so I could see it. Then a few days later the spider made an egg sack in the jar. We fed the spider a cricket. She came down and grabbed it and pulled it back and wrapped it in silk then ate it. It was pretty cool.
This morning I saw the baby spiders in the jar. They were so small they looked like mites. They were in a clump until we put the jar lid outside. I also saw three of the spiderlings ballooning. That's where they fly away on a string of silk. So I am leaving the jar lid out side, so they can, so they can, balloon away.

Big Black Beetle with Mites

My Grandpa Dierks found this beetle in the grass. He picked it up and it didn't bite him. It's the biggest beetle I have ever seen. It had big jaws and a little horn on it. I thought I saw little red dots on it's face when I put it in the jar. Today we took it out of the jar so my Mom could take pictures of it and then we saw a bunch of mites on it. The beetle looked like it was bothered by the mites. But then we found out that the mites don't actually harm the beetle, they're just along for the ride.

Caterpillar Guest Post by Karina

 

My sister found this caterpillar and is going to tell you about it.

I found it on my Maya's road. It was crawling around and it was about to crawl in the grass. Maya gave me a jar and it crawled on my thumb and then I bent my thumb on the jar to get it off into the jar. The jar had sticks and dirt in it. We put some leaves in the jar. 

This morning the leaves were all gone. I put my leaf in from the backyard (this morning) and it gobbled up a big circle. I think it will turn into a black swallowtail because it is black.  It is so black and fluffy, it's head is yellow. And when I touched my brother's caterpillar it feeled like it was dead and then it crawled. And then my caterpillar had a stick and a little stick and then it crawled on the big stick to the tippy top. Like my in the morning the dandelion leaves I had the then I got the my own leaves in the backyard and then it gobbled up a big big big circle and then it looked like it was, ummmm.

I'll let you know what happens with the caterpillar.

Spider in my Bug Playground

 
My sister saw a spider that I think is a crab spider. It was on the wall by the table in the dining room. I caught it by trapping it in my bug playground. So far it has made three webs. Two are in the jungle gym and one is in the twisty slide. I think he broke it to get out (of the web).

I'm going to try feeding him either an ant or a small cricket. Sometimes when I see him crawling around he crawls on the walls and the ceiling. The climbing wall is perfect for him. And he was the first creature to go through the tube in the bug playground. You can see him in the tube in the picture above.