Bug Squad

Fantastic title: "Bad Bugs, Pungent Parasites and Toxic Travelers!" Don't you just love that alliteration?

Talk about a quail of a time.... When the ootheca of a praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, hatched April 9 on a clothespin clamped to our clothesline in our yard, all the nymphs scattered. Some crawled up a metallic quail sculpture, the highest structure on the clothesline.

Saturday, April 9 was the day a clothespin sprang to life. Some 200 praying mantis nymphs emerged from an ootheca that Mama Mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) had deposited last summer in our pollinator garden in Vacaville.

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home Your house is on fire and your children are gone All except one, and her name is Ann And she hid under the baking pan. So says a traditional nursery rhyme traced back to 1744 when it appeared in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook, according to Wikipedia.

Don't miss this seminar by Tobin Hammer Wednesday, April 13 on "Mystery of the Missing Microbes: Why Do Bees Keep Losing Their Symbionts?