Bug Fest

We interrupt your regularly scheduled vacation photos to bring you this message about what we did today. We went to Bug Fest at the NC Museum of Natural History. Bug exhibits were set up throughout the museum and along several streets outside. We talked to bug experts about the exciting one-day life of adult mayflies, saw a beekeeper wearing a bee beard, cheered on our favorite contender in the cockroach race, learned about mummy berry blight, held bugs, ate a chocolate-covered bug larva (I was the only one brave enough to try it), and slurped snow cone syrup from a flower-shaped bowl.

The first thing we saw when we got there was a giant dead beetle lying on its back:


The most unusual thing we saw was a real, old-fashioned flea circus. Scott and I were standing in the back, so we didn't actually see the fleas, but the kids were sitting on the ground up front, and Audrey swears she got splashed when the high-diving flea landed in the tin can of water.


Scott was impressed by the real, mechanical street organ that the flea circus ringmaster played by turning a crank. Digital everything is taken for granted so much now, that anything non-digital seems amazing. Like watching a crowd scene in an old movie and realizing, "Wow, those are all real people!"


Here's Mary holding her new friend. She held praying mantises and stick bugs. Audrey petted hissing cockroaches and held a small stick bug.

The bug I ate didn't taste gross. It was chewy and chocolatey. The only gross part was picking little exoskeleton bits out of my teeth afterwards.