Bug Squad

We look forward to "The Boys' Night Out." Ah, pillow fights, popcorn, and marathon movies on TV, you ask? No. "Boys' Night Out" is when the longhorned male bees in our pollinator garden in Vacaville engage in sleepovers on our Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia) and other blossoms.

Move over, teddy bears! There's a new bear in town. Stuiffed toy animals resembling tardigrades, aka "water bears," are all the rage at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's year-around gift shop at the University of California, Davis.

Talk about extremes! Have you ever thought about how some insects have adapted to fire, ice, acid, hot water, salt and the desert? Have you ever seen an ambrosia beetle, a red turpentine beetle, an ice cricket, a brine fly or a sand wasp?

This was a case of bugs sharing the spotlight with pigs, polar bears and pigeons.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again. --Nursery Rhyme It was an itsy bitsy spider. But it wasn't climbing up a water spout.