May 9, 2016June Bug Suite

Langston brought my attention to an injured june bug. How could we help it? Nate and Anders join him and together they build a structure around the june bug.

Nate puts the yellow milk crate over the june bug “so animals won’t eat it” and the tray on top “so no one can see it.”

The PVC chutes act as a slide in case the bug wants to play.

Nate rolls a ball down the pipe.

He also put a bug-sized pool and a ball at the bottom of the slide for the bug to play in.

Langston returns the pool, now filled with the water from the hose, back to the structure.

He places the pool next to the protected june bug. Nate thinks it should be used to as drinking water, but Langston thinks it should use it should be used for swimming.

A large crowd gathers around the structure to study the june bug.

Langston moves the bug to bean sprout paradise in the raised garden bed (above) to escape the crowd and noise. Note the escape slide, just in case.

May 9, 2016Reflection: Anders has been building large structures with these materials for a few weeks now. I like how he’s drawn his friends into the action.

Langston and I had a long discussion about whether or not to put the injured june bug in its mini swimming pool, since neither of us know how well they swim in water, particularly when injured. Should we experiment on a living thing to find the answer to our question: do june bugs swim? Or should we take the safe route and allow the bug to make its own choices?

Nate contributed a number of small details: the tiny pool, the roof for hiding. He was also most vocal about the bug using the structure as though it were a kid-- for swimming, sliding, and playing.

I’m also interested in the idea of scale here. They built such a large structure for such a small little bug. In the picture below, you get a sense of how sprawling the structure was.