BUG & THINGS THAT HAVE MANY LEGS

It was in Norman that I developed a rather healthy interest in bugs and other many-legged creatures. I remember from Faculty Heights being afraid of scorpions and being stung by "red" ants. And I can't recall ever seeing "horny" toads anywhere else I have lived (and in fact the Texas horned toad is an endangered species and almost non-existent in central and eastern Oklahoma today).

The horned toad is obviously a lizard and not a toad; and the horns and spotted color are for protection against predators because they blend with the surroundings. Horned toads ate one of my later interests, beetles.

Another bug that fascinated us as kids was the lightning bug. We would punch holes in the lid of a Ball jar with a hammer and nail and then collect the bugs in the jar and watch them light up. It turns out the the lighting has to do with mating. Male fireflies are the original "flashers". Flashing lightning bugs are trying to attract mates. Among most but not all species of North American Lightning Bugs, males fly about flashing while females perch on vegetation, usually near the ground. If the female sees a flasher and she's ready to mate she responds by flashing right after the male's last flash. A short flash dialogue takes place as the male flies closer and closer, and then, if all goes well, they mate. So that a flasher doesn't attract a firefly of a different species, each Lightning Bug species has its own special flash pattern. Flash patterns range from continuous glows or single flashes, to series of multi-pulsed flashes.

My memories of beetles come from about the time we moved from Faculty Heights across town to Cruce street. One of my neighborhood and scouting friends was Ricky Hopla (whose father became an internationally known expert in zoonotic diseases-those transmitted from animals to humans and chairman of the Zoo department at OU). I was soon capturing beetles, dragon flies, butterflies, moths, wasps and bees and putting them in a jar with a cotton ball soaked with carbon tetrachloride, which put them to "sleep". We would then carefully mount them on very skinny pins and store them in special boxes with styrofoam bottoms. As I remember, my bug boxes moved to New Mexico when we left Norman.

One of my other bug memories comes from University School days, the cecropia moth. Near the school was open area with a small stream running through it. On a field trip we found a cocoon attached to a plant stalk and took the stalk back to our classroom. The cocoon was tan and fibrous looking (cecropia is the largest silk moth in North America) as it is spun from silk. Weeks later the cocoon began to open and out came a beautiful moth as pictured.

My other many-legged creature was my absolute favorite. We got our first dog, a beagle named Jewlie, in Norman. We needed a short-haired, relatively non-allergic dog because of my asthma. We got all that but we also got a digger, and runner and baying at the moon. We installed a chain-link fence around the back yard on Cruce street to contain Jewlie.

That wasn't enough and we had to bury chicken wire under the fence to prevent digging out. And since the dog whisperer was no where to be found, each time she managed to get out, she ran like the wind. Most yards didn't have fences but the all had clothes lines. One day about dusk, Jewlie managed to escape and ran across the street with me in hot pursuit. We went through three or four back yards and then all of a sudden, wham, I was flat on the ground with a very sore neck. I had learned what it means to get "clotheslined" up close and personal.

Addendum: I found a letter from my Mom to GM Edwards regarding Jewlie from April 1960:

"Jewlie has been digging like a maniac this week--digs out of our yard, then through Mrs. Merritts's rose bed and runs away. I told the boys I thought we should give her to the humane society, to which Mark replied: 'But Mother, she wouldn't like it up there!' and Mike just wouldn't even talk about it. We are about at our wits' end to know how to keep her in."