Other insect related
adventures were also connected to a club.
This time, the location of the rocks was directly behind Nick’s
kitchen. For anyone wondering, how this qualified
as “far from being viewed by wherever the parents are hanging out?”
We spent most of our
time there during the day while everyone else was down the Lake.
The first order of
business was deciding that this was going to be a club focused on nature…
No, I take that back.
The first order of
business was Nick and Skip having a massive argument about who was going to be
President and who was going to be Vice President. This stemmed not from any
responsibility, since we had none, but from the notion that the President got
the larger rock to be his club office, and the Veep had to make due with a
smaller one.
Being a lifelong geek
and missing the competition gene, I avoided the entire issue by proclaiming
myself “Science Officer” and claiming a smaller rock on the other side of the
club for my lab.
Nick eventually became President
based on the unbreakable argument of, “It’s my cabin.” Therefore the largest and most comfortable
rock went to his sister, Chrissy.
She was the
Secretary/Receptionist and stated she needed that office because it would be
the first thing people saw when they came in. This turned out to be valuable
training for my real job, and explained why our receptionist had a monitor
large enough that she could angle it flat and play solitaire on it with real
cards instead of using the built in program, which I believe is the most
advanced graphics she used on her machine.
Our locations settled,
we focused on helping nature. The
mission statement of the club this time was to find injured animals in the woods
and nurse them back to health.
Considering this was the same summer we also wandered the woods on
several BB gun hunts, we were either hypocritical, or attempting to supply our
own demand.
Whether hunting or
helping, we found no birds, deer or any other animals in need of assistance, or
being shot that year. That meant we were forced to attend to the readily accessible
insect population.
Initially, this
consisted of catching a couple of bugs, and putting them in my “Insect
Zoo.” That’s a pretty grand name for a small,
clear sided bucket with a lid, air holes and the world’s least realistic
plastic leaf in the center. Our goal was
to determine the outcome of gladiatorial style battles between different
species. Considering the way we
attempted to generate this behavior was by cheering them on, it was about as
successful as any of our other ventures.
The true excitement came
when, in a fit of obviously forgetting who she was dealing with, the owner
loaned us (or mostly me, the supposedly respectable one) an ancient tome from
her kindergarten classroom: 1001 Bug Experiments.
No crawly critters were
safe from our scientific curiosity.
The largest problem with
the book…
Not counting
A) Its existence at all.
And
B) The fact that we had
it.
Was that the experiments
all called for uniquely specific species.
Up the Lake most
assuredly had an extremely high concentration of insect life form per square
foot. However, it’s not like there was a
pull down menu of bug availability.
In general, we’d find a
cool sounding procedure, and go scrounging for substitutions.
The suspended animation
demonstrations caught our eyes. They
detailed how walking stick metabolism was keyed to temperature and heating or
cooling them would cause them to instantly go into hibernation. We read the details about how low
temperatures were safer, using a refrigerator or freezer but if the high
temperature was carefully controlled it would work as well using an oven on a
low setting.
There were three key
obstacles to our foray into arthropod cryogenics:
#1) There was no way our
mothers would let us put bugs in their refrigerators.
#2) There was less than
no way our mothers would let us put bugs in their ovens.
#3) I saw exactly two
walking sticks Up the Lake in my entire life, both when I was an adult.
SUBSTITUTIONS!
With access to
hermetically sealed self-cooling systems banned, we sought alternate chilling
locations. In what may, or may not be
connected with previous experience, we knew we could sneak into the beer cooler
without being seen.
Hey, were you aware that
a refrigerator keeps its contents cold due to its workings and power source,
which somehow magically involves fire for the Up the Lake gas ones? However, a cooler works on an entirely
different principal. It keeps things cool by having the heat energy from them
absorbed by melting ice. For the
science fans following along, melting is the key word here.
We did not learn
anything about daddy long legs’ temperature controlled hibernation.
We did learn they are
not waterproof, and are terrible swimmers.
Fortunately, (or
unfortunately for the subjects) there was the other end of the heat spectrum.
With the overabundance
of both daddy long legs and campfires in our collective knowledge base, we were
well acquainted with the high “flash potential” those little buggers had when
wandering too close to a flame. Another
substitution was needed.
Since ovens were banned,
campfires lacked the low level control we needed, and barbecues combined both
problems, we thought our scientific curiosity would never be sated.
Fortunately, (again,
probably not) one of the barbecue-ers left a Coleman lantern on the table. Heated
by twin mantles, its metal top became a makeshift hot plate and experimental
tool.
We found one of the
small, black August heralding crickets, and prepared to adjust his
metabolism. Ever mindful of the
“carefully controlled” warning about the heat, we looked for a way to protect
the volunteer(ish) test subject.
Possibly inspired by the
submerged daddy long leg, we divined that if we liberally dipped our little
friend into a nearby puddle before briefly placing him on the experimental
surface, the water would cool him enough to allow us to keep him alive, and see
if he hibernated.
When the fiasco was
finished we all did realize that it hadn’t rained in quite a while, and the
“protective puddle” was, in reality, grease drippings from the barbecue we were
in no way allowed to put bugs on.
If we had figured that
out ahead of time, the Kentucky Fried Cricket would have been far less of a
surprise.
In general, while
conflicts with the insect population were inevitable, most of us learned to
co-exist. There were some exceptions for
the most diehard entomophobes.
Uncle Ackie was the poster
child for the Italian polar opposite of calm and controlled under normal
circumstances. His insect encounters
raised things up several notches. Some
thought it was one of his many jokes when he wore his mosquito netted safari
hat, but those who were closer to him knew better.
Bolting out down the
hill without refastening himself because a small flying creature joined him in
the outhouse was fairly close to normal Up the Lake levels of ridiculous.
Seeing moths in the
bedroom and deciding to drive home to the Bronx was above and beyond those
limits, however. His wife thinking he
must have gone out for pizza…
In the middle of the
night…
In the woods…
Was an equally
interesting reaction to the evening.
His crowning meeting
with the insect order came when a bee entered his vehicle and he immediately
jumped out. No, this was not a sunny
afternoon Up the Lake with him leaping from his own car. He was driving a gravel truck through the
middle of Manhattan, and stopped traffic for many blocks until he was able to
convince an incredulous police officer to “shoo it out” before he would reenter
the cab of his truck.
Most others came to
terms more easily.
Later in the same post-toddling
summer as the “inchworm incident” that started this story, my far more relaxed
daughter spied a tiny, brown inchworm hanging from its thread.
She calmly and sweetly said,
“Hello little inchy-worm!”
We watched it for a bit,
had a fine time, and then she decided to “let it go on its merry way.”
I looked over at her a
bit perplexed, but before I could ask the questions forming in my mind, she
flatly stated:
"Only the green
ones have laser beams."
Yes, that is her holding the daddy long leg above. Improvements continued.
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