Bug Squad

As the predominantly red-and-green holiday season draws to a close, and the year crawls to an end, it's time to "bee in the pink." Pink? Yes, "in the pink." Skip the red. Ignore the green. Think "in the pink.

What are you doing on New Year's Day? Well, weather permitting, you can begin searching for the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano. If you photograph it and you are judged the winner, a prize awaits you--in addition to bragging rights.

To catch a cabbage white butterfly... It was early October and a gravid praying mantis, almost ready to deposit her ootheca, was hungry. She crawled behind a cactus in our yard, waiting for prey. It did not take long.

UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro's annual Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest, in which he trades a pitcher of beer (or its equivalent) for the first-of-the-year cabbage white butterfly collected in a three-county area, is of special interest this year.

Your mama tells you that you're a bee, but when you look around you, you don't look like any of the bees you encounter in the meadow. Not the honey bee, not the carpenter bee, not the bumble bee, not the cuckoo bee and not any of the other assorted bees minding their own bees-ness in the meadow.