Sneaking stealthily through the underbrush, the fearless freshman spotted a creature of rare beauty and excellence. Not waiting for it to escape, the freshman pounced on it with net and jar.
“Aw man, another cricket,” the freshman sighed.
Fortunately, this is the sort of situation that was prevented by pre-AP Biology teachers Shara Humpert and Robert Novak this year. That’s right. No you didn’t read incorrectly, the freshman are not doing an insect project this year.
“[We’re not doing it] primarily because of the drought,” Novak said.
And indeed the drought this year has been tough. (See ‘OUT OF THE FRYING PAN…’, p. 7)
“The weather service tells us we’re in the worst drought since 1921, and we’ve had 5.8 inches of rain since October 2010. There just aren’t many insects,” Humpert said.
It is very true. People who usually get eaten alive by mosquitoes, for one, will have noticed the considerable lack of the species.
“I was seeing maybe five or six orders in my yard, compared to what I used see. [I would] laugh at the kids and say, ‘Yeah I saw 10 orders on the way to school today,'” Humpert said.
Novak was concerned about the difficulty of the project because there are so few insects to find.
“You’d have to go out looking really hard to find anything that is the least bit unusual,” Novak said. “The insect collections are hard enough as it is, but then when you factor in that you’ve only got a quarter of the insects that you normally have, it just makes it doubly hard.”
Freshman all across the board are relieved that they don’t have projects of their own to do.
“My friend who goes to Old High and is in pre-AP Biology there says they still have to do it. He came over to my house, and I had to help him look for some bugs,” freshman Austin Laughlin said.
Humpert says the environmental scare was as much a factor as the new found difficulty of completing the project.
“What we were hearing from Wild Bird Rescue, was that some of the migratory birds and even our indigenous species were having trouble finding food for their young,” Humpert said. “They were kicking their babies out of the nest. They had probably 40 [baby birds] turned in during one month’s time, which is what they usually have over a whole summer season.”
Novak’s concern was not as much for the birds as it was for the students.
“I don’t think it wasn’t as much an environmental issue as it was that I didn’t want my students to have to struggle to find those last 20 or 30 insects. I really didn’t want to put them through that,” Novak said.
Although they may have had different reasons, both teachers ultimately agreed that it was best to abstain from having the insect project this year.
Fall semester is off the hook. However, both teachers hinted at some sort of project for the spring semester. Freshmen, happy hunting!