Bug Scientist

Monkey1 said that Monkey2 caught the escaped grasshopper. 

A minute later, she reported that the grasshopper had bit Monkey2, who showed her finger in evidence: "The orange. He put his poison on me!" 

"I don't think the grasshopper wanted to go back in the cage," I observed.

"That's his spit," corrected Dad.

"Go wash it off," I suggested, "You can have a bandaid if you want." Though clearly there was no blood, which is usually the criteria for a bandaid. (Otherwise we go through far too many bandaids in a day.)

However, my little bug scientist was only temporarily discouraged. The next day at the playground she had a whole pack of children catching crickets and carrying them around in sand buckets. The following day, three grasshoppers ended up in our cricket cage which was already getting crowded with five crickets.

Yes, my four-and-a-half-year-old calls herself a bug scientist. At a family BBQ she found a cicada nymph's discarded exoskeleton and was then directed to one of my husband's cousins, an entomologist at the University of North Carolina. They had a lengthy conversation, and she came home with a string of big words and a plastic cup full of the exoskeletons. 

The next evening my husband found a live cicada nymph on our sidewalk, put it in Monkey2's bug box, and by the next morning, it had climbed out of its skin and now looked like a giant fly. She was enthralled. 

Ever since, a terrorized scream of "A bug!" from Monkey1 has Monkey2 charging to the scene proclaiming, "Out of the way! I'm a bug scientist - I'll pick it up!"