Bug Squad

DAVIS--A beer for a butterfly. If you collect the first live cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) of 2015 in Yolo, Sacramento or Solano counties and have it verified as the winner, you'll get a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.

It's time to revisit "The 13 Bugs of Christmas." You've heard "The 12 Days of Christmas," beginning with a single "partridge in a pear tree" and ending with "12 drummers drumming.

Professor Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 July 10, 1863) wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas" for his family in 1822. It later became known as "The Night Before Christmas." Fast forward, 92 years later.

Male praying mantids looking for "a little love" don't always fare well. Sometimes they lose their head. Female mantids can--and do--cannibalize them before, during or after copulation.

The late comedian Rodney Dangerfield would have liked male ants. It was Dangerfield (1921-2004), you know, who coined the catchphrase, "I don't get no respect.