Bug Squad

The scenario: a male praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, is perched on a pink zinnia in a Vacaville pollinator garden filled with bees and butterflies. Praying Mantis: "Hey, photographer, take my picture! And, can you make me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger?" Photographer: "Sure, Mr. Mantis.

If you've been ignoring your calendar, you may have not realized that autumn began Sept. 23. We know it as the season between summer and winter, when days grow shorter, when liquidambar leaves turn red, and when the blanket flower lives up to its name.

Did you know that tsetse flies give birth to live offspring?

Visitors at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house learned about such "household vampires" as mosquitoes, fleas, lice, ticks and bedbugs, and many also participated in the family arts-and-crafts activities.

They saw mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, lice and bed bugs at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on "Household Vampires." They learned that "medical entomologist is the study of arthropods (such as insects and ticks) that spread pathogens that cause human disease.