Budding Entomologist

A friend told me once that the greatest barrier between kids and careers in science is their mothers. I don't want to be that mother, but Jude is really into bugs these days and I'm not comfortable with that.

He likes to find bugs, identify them in his 4-year-old classification system (anything long is a worm), and make up happy stories about them. Invariably the bugs he finds live in traditional nuclear family units like ours.

A few weeks ago we were sitting on the deck and noticed a dozen or so dragonflies swooping overhead. We talked about the mosquitoes they must be eating and spent a long time watching them. They are a fast and acrobatic!

Jude told me that he thinks dragonflies don't have noses. He saw one fall down one time and it didn't have a nose. I sure don't know about dragonfly noses, so we went to the library and got a book about them. Turns out that they smell with antennae. Noses are not mentioned.

This weekend I took Jude out around the church property to "look for bugs." I didn't really want to find any, but bug hunting is always a good sales pitch with Jude. The first thing we found was a dragonfly zooming around the parking lot. Jude spent about ten minutes running around trying to catch the dragonfly. "Do you think I can catch it, Mom? Hey, where did that dragonfly go? Oh there he is! Do you think I can catch him?" Running does not slow down the talking with Jude.

This morning there was a mosquito in the kitchen. Jude's solution: "We need to get a dragonfly in here!"