When You Homeschool, EVERYTHING'S a Lesson

Yesterday a good friend came over. We sat on the porch, discussing everything under the sun (as we girls tend to do).

In the middle of our conversation, she said, "Emily, I don't know if this'll freak you ou, but there's a bug crawling up the leg of your chair." (she's a fairly new friend, but we're getting along famously.)

My standard reply is "as long as it doesn't bite or sting, I'm okay." I never even glanced down to see the type of bug.

After a few minutes, I saw this:Tiger was kind of watching it. This is no little bug - this picture is about twice it's size, so it's pretty big. The body itself is over an inch long.

So Tiger gets to playing with it. Mary and I are both kind of in awe of it. This was the "bug" she saw on my chair? The girl has the gift of understatement.

So Andrew grabs a jar and we catch it (no miracle, the thing walks sooo slow). And we head inside to look it up on Bug Guide. We're all sitting together, trying to figure out what classification to look under. We probably looked for about 5 minutes before I plugged in Mary's description of it - dinosaur. And there it was....the Sail Back Dinosaur Bug, aka Wheel Bug.

From the assassin bug family. Bite that hurts worse than a bee sting. Also emits a pungent odor when threatened, which can cause an allergic reaction. Eats bumblebees for lunch. Just one scary customer.

So here I am, freaking out because I picked this thing up with my bare hands! Tiger was playing with it like a cat toy! And Andrew is having a blast, listening to us and laughing.

I'm all for catch and release, but this little monster is dying in the jar. I'm not chancing meeting HIM in a dark alley anytime soon. For all we know, he's probably the type to hold a grudge.

Do you think Andrew will forget the wheel bug anytime soon?