Bug Squad

What a marvelous year! Looking back at 2016, monarch butterflies reigned supreme--or at least they did in this Bug Squad blog! Finding--and photographing--a tagged monarch butterfly (monarch@wsu.edu A6083) in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. on Labor Day, Sept. 5, highlighted the year.

This is a story about how eight monarch butterflies escaped the freezing temperatures of Vacaville, Calif., and hitchhiked to sunny Santa Cruz, thanks to Good Samaritans (Good Monarcharians?) Rita LeRoy and Walter Rockholt of Vallejo.

It's almost that time againtime for the annual Beer for a Butterfly contest or Suds for a Bug. If you're out and about on Jan. 1, start looking for that cabbage white butterfly.

If you want to learn about native bees, the place to "bee" on Saturday, Jan. 7 is the Rush Ranch Nature Center, 3521 Grizzly Island Road, Suisun.

Back in March of 1977, ABC launched a TV comedy-drama series titled "Eight Is Enough." It was about a Sacramento, Calif., family with eight children. The journalist/father, Tom Bradford, wrote a column for the fictitious Sacramento Register. "Eight Is Enough!" the father declared. He was wrong.