Tag Archives for bugs

Denver Museum of Nature and Science [the best of]

Among thousands of butterflies, this one was my favorite.

Very Dr. Seussian prehistoric undersea plants.

The echidna, one of the only two monotremes in existence (along with the platypus). It reminds me of Nausicaa.

Creepy monkey skeleton

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! Yeah. Freakishly huge wasp.

Incredible shell formations

Whole case full of incredible shell formations!

Homely gigantic prehistoric hog.

Skeleton of a sting ray – check out those … ribs? Amazing!

Giant wooly mammoth!

Insects in Shadowboxes, or: “Making Work that is Impossible to Photograph”

Grave of the Fireflies/Beetles/Wasps/Unidentified insect bits

Short of being an entymologist, I, like many, have a shared love-attraction/revulsion towards insects. I love how even the creepy, insta-goosebump producing specimens are eerily, alien-like, beautiful. After pinning houseflies to a drawing last year, I decided that there was no reason the notch couldn’t be kicked up a bit. After some online hunting, I came across Butterflies and Things, an online wholesaler of spread, unspread, retail, wholesale, and – perfect for my uses – “bulk broken beetles/insects for pieces/parts.” At a highly discounted price, you can order a mystery-bag of random bits. I decided to risk it, half-thinking the bag would be full of common borers and little click beetle pieces that I could have collected myself, but I was extremely happy and surprised to find the quality of the bits I got in the mail last night:

As far as I can tell: some AWESOME hercules-type beetles, a fractured scorpion, wasp, grasshopper-body, the head of a peanut beetle, and what look like… cicadas?! Could I have been so lucky?

The “bag of broken beetles” yielded a surprisingly high number of close-to-intact specimens.

Also ordered were some intact wasps: and they did not disappoint (shivers)!

I admittedly almost dropped the box when I peeled back the bubble wrap to see this partial tarantula. A lifetime of horror movies and tv-shows about parasites and deadly insects has pretty much brainwashed me.

This green guy is 5.5″ long! There is a seam in his (her?) belly where you can see gutting has taken place. These insects are large enough to be taxidermied!

I need to get back to work!