Pest Control Community

In early June, American Pest Management received a phone call from a very nice woman named Diane Cooper Shaw who wanted to know if we would come to her six-year-old son’s birthday party and talk to the children about bugs.  Her son Kevin loves to dig insects up in the back yard and is an entomologist in the making.  On Saturday July 21, 2007, myself and James Christiansen attended Kevin’s birthday party.  There were about ten children under the age of 10 and two teenage brothers in attendance.  We started by talking about insects and had a question and answer session about some of the characteristics and differences between certain insects.  Then we talked about where to look for insects, like underneath rocks, pieces of wood, in mulch, and any other places where there is wet ground.

After this brief discussion, we broke everyone up into groups and went on an insect hunting trip around the house.  We had handed out little gift bags to everyone which included vials for collecting insects.  The children had a great time turning over stones, looking under bushes, digging in mulch, and looking up and down trees for insects.  We collected several spiders, including two which had spider eggs attached to them.  We collected cave crickets, camel crickets, odorous-house ants, pavement ants, carpenter ants, sow bugs, and many other insects.  It was great to see how excited all of the children were to collect different insects and find “buried treasure” underneath rocks.  They had so much fun that it was hard to stop them from collecting the insects so that we could talk about what we had collected.

James and I then gathered the group together at the picnic table and we collected all of the samples so we could talk about what we found.  We then talked about each insect and briefly told the children a little story about each.  They had a number of questions which we answered.  I think they all had a good time which was confirmed by Diane at the end when she said we were, “right up there with the monkeys from a couple of years ago.”  James and I had a good time at Kevin’s party and I hope we can do this again.  It was great to see all of the kids smiling and having a good time, especially the birthday boy.

We gave Kevin a children’s insect book and an American Pest Management hat and inducted him as an honorary employee of American Pest Management.