MaeLyn's Musings

This cute little guy came around for a visit a couple days ago. Peter found him on the wall of the house Friday.  He and Joshua played with him, and enjoyed his fluffiness before letting him go. We did a search on Google, and we thought he might be a spotted apatelodes. Someday he will turn into a rather nondescript brownish grey moth, but for now, he is beautiful! (He is much cuter than the teeny brown ants that have invaded our cats' food dish. I've resorted to putting a moat (an upside down lid filled with water) under the food dish to try to keep them out!)

I've got bad news, better news and wonderful news. The bad news: The floods from a few weeks ago brought devastation to our area. Flood water washed away cars, houses, and lives. The water receded, but not soon enough to stop a plague. In quiet pools of water, thousands and hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes laid eggs, which have since hatched into an army of billions of tiny, but persistent, blood sucking monsters. Last Sunday I awoke with an itchy red bump just below my right eye. Monday one appeared on my knee, another on my wrist, and they kept appearing. John went on a field trip to a lake on Monday and got sixteen bites, eleven of which were all on one arm. Yesterday I got one on the side of my nose! Everyone I have asked about it has agreed that the mosquitoes are bad - except Hannah. She claims not to have been bitten once! The better news: It is snowing this morning for the first time this fall! Maybe the snow will freeze the bloodsuckers. The wonderful news: I thi...

I may have mentioned before that Steven and I are currently serving as Webelos Den Leaders. One of our Webelos has a huge interest in bugs. He earned his naturalist badge some time ago, but he wanted to help the other boys in the den earn this badge, so the last two weeks, we have let him. The first week he led a discussion of venomous snakes and reptiles, as well as poisonous plants. This past week, he brought in everything necessary to build a terrarium/bug habitat. Until Peter's eighth birthday next month, he is an honorary Webelos, and so he got to participate, and brought home his very own bug jar - complete with a bunch of meal worms and a couple crickets. The next morning, I put the jar in a window sill, thinking that the the sun might do them some good. Then I left to walk the boys to school. When I returned home, the jar was still in window, but Momo, one of our cats was watching it intently. I was wondering how good an idea this was as I went back to the kitchen to fi...