Educating Risa

On our weekend trip to Edmonton for Daegan’s birthday, we took in an Insect class for families at Devonian Gardens, about 15 minutes SW of the city. Daegan and Jim have done classes in this series before, but this was Gareth’s first time—and mine—and was he ever excited! We all had a good time, but were also glad to come back to the hotel for a cooling swim once it was done—it was BLAZING HOT. Here’s the pics:

Daegan walking and chatting with the instructor Katie as we headed to the greenhouses. We found out that she’s taken all of John Acorn’s classes at the University of Alberta, and as he is one of Daegan’s entomological idols, they found plenty to talk about:

Katie explaining how the butterflies climb out of the boxes behind her once they emerge from their chrysalises:

Looking for butterflies in our favourite butterfly house in Alberta—it’s so lush!:

The class getting our instructions for the scavenger hunt in the arid greenhouse. We were to find tallest cactus, the cactus that looked like a hairy old man, the one of the prettiest flowers, the one that did the best camouflage job, etc.: 

Here’s the smelliest flowers, from the “carrion plant.” By smelling like rotting meat, the flowers attract pollinators like flies. And yes, we all got close and smelled it—once was enough!

We then moved on to the “plants and people” house, which showcases a wide variety of plants humans use for all kinds of purposes, including papyrus, black pepper, mint, banana, and more. There was even a plant that made your hands smell like peanut butter when you rubbed it! (nut allergy-safe!)

They have a stick insect living in this greenhouse, which many of the kids got a chance to hold. Here’s Gareth holding “Georgia”:

We then headed outside to a scrubby meadow, past all the showy flowers, like these lady slipper orchids. BTW, the white stuff on the ground isn’t snow, it’s poplar fluff—yup, not a season goes by without white drifts on the ground in Alberta!

This was the kids’ favourite part of the class—the bug hunt! They had bug nets for all of us, some with shorter handles for kids, some with longer for adults, and off we went to collect bugs. Though no one in the class caught more than a handful, by sending the 20-plus of us out into the meadow, we caught a decent variety and number of bugs. And I did mention Gareth being excited, right?

We caught bugs for a half-hour or so, bringing our nets to Katie who put the bugs into catch-and-release jars for “show and tell” later. We then gathered around and got a mini-lesson on insects and spiders. Here’s Gareth and two other young volunteers demonstrating the characteristics of most insects: 3 body parts, 6 legs, 2 antennae, and 4 wings:

And here’s the characteristics of spiders: 2 body parts and 8 legs:

Katie then showed the class what we caught, and passed around the jars for a closer look. Here’s a Hunt’s bumblebee:

Gareth with caterpillar and then bluet damselfly:

Daegan checking out the entire collection a second time:

Gareth with the butterfly and moth cage, which contained several species. The one in the picture is the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, one of the most striking large butterflies you’ll find in these parts:

And right at the end as folks were heading off, Gareth found a wolf spider on Katie’s backpack. We learned it was a male wolf spider, which you can tell by looking at its palps (short leg-like/antenae-like things near its face). Male spiders have “boxing gloves” (clubs) on their palps, female spiders have long, smooth palps (“manicured palps”, as Katie put it).

We had a great time at this class, and are headed back for another in the series, on Animals of Alberta in July, and then one on Frogs and Pond Life in August. I’ve got a few more pics of our birthday weekend in Edmonton to share…to be continued tomorrow.