The Mystery Bug

I was at my Mystery Bug Headquarters, when I got an urgent call. It was my Aunt Sandee. I heard screaming in the background, "There is a savage bug attacking my daughter in the bathroom!" she said.

"Capture it! Bring it here immediately!" I said.

That evening we held a meeting in her parents' house. She described a clawed, voracious, eight- legged terror hiding in the bathtub. I asked to see the specimen (I was still curious about the size of this monster.) She handed me the iron box (aka Tupperware) in which it was kept and told me to use the most extreme caution. With shaking hands I opened the package.

............. Inside......

was ......

a....

quarter inch long bug with minuscule pincers and tiny legs? I gave my aunt a "this is your monster bug" kind of look, and said "I'll take the case" and decided to call it a night.

I couldn't sleep that night. I kept thinking I had seen something like it in one of my many reference books. In the morning I got out my textbooks and found a match.

It was known as a Pseudoscorpion. After a quick bit of computer work we sent some pictures and the name to my client, Aunt Sandee. So the case was solved.

Signing off,

Jesse Maretzki, Bug Identifier

[Photo Credit #1]

My Arachnid ( arak- nid )

A little while ago, I got a spider as a pet, to be exact it is an Orb Spider. In my eyes it is a beautiful creature, designed by God himself. I acquired this interesting pet by walking by the fence, and to my my surprise, I saw a giant spider! This one is around an inch long and an inch across including the legs. This spider is in the arachnid family, which includes scorpions, mites, and spiders. You can classify an arachnid by how many legs it's got and how many body sections, which is usually two. Spiders are not in the insect family because insects have six legs and three body sections. I take care of my spider by putting them in a terrarium and adding the kinds of things they would have in the wild. If you want to have a pet spider try to make it's habitat as realistic as possible. I even make it rain in his cage by dripping water on and in the cage. My spider very amazingly made a web the same way it would have in the wild and it's web works. Taking the advantage of this awesome thing: I feed flies to the spider and it catches the flies in the web and then attacks it, sometimes wraps it up and sucks it dry. I marvel at how God took time to make this small spider and it just ends up being a thing people run from when they see it.

The Toad

Recently I was digging on the dirt pile that came from our backyard. We then used that pile of dirt for a number of thing such as the following. Climbing, tunneling, and throwing pieces of dirt off and breaking at the bottom. And at one particular tunnel I was digging I looked away for some reason, I looked back at a my hole and there was a toad! And then he scrambled back into his den. It must have been living there already because it knew all the overlooked hideouts that only a persistent observer would notice. Jude, of course had quickly realized there was a toad in that little cave and was dying to hold it of course. I didn't want him to touch it, but Jude looked like he was using every ounce of self control he had. In the end I coundn't bear the look on his face so I let him hold and then I, and Jude were happier and then I just learned that your brother is more important than a warty old toad P.S. all toads who read this do not be offended.

Camp, Sports, and Cicadas

Last week the kids and Mom got away for awhile. We drove for about two and a half hours to get to Bethel Park camp. where we expierienced numerous displays of God's creation. One of the most amazing things was the wonders of the Cicada [say, sic-a-da]. Have you ever heard a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... Chances are you likely have. It comes from a insect called a Cicada. Their parents lay their eggs in the trees and the young hatch and crawl out. They dig a burrow into the ground and then amazingly, they will stay their for seventeen years!! But that buzzing sound you may have heard is only the males making this call. After their 17 year sentence, at night they will crawl out of their underground prison and onto a tree. Then they will stop. After a while something amazing starts to happen. The adult Cicada crawls out of its old skin and and once out it will sit on its skin waiting for it's wings to straighten out and its bright green body to become darker. Some of the other creatures we ran into last week were a snake, (that Jude caught all by himself) and a toad. I did not want to catch this toad because it was at night and I couldn't see it to clearly. Believe it or not toads are poisonous. They have two poison glands on the top of their head that appear to be two bars or lumps, and if spueezed will spuirt poison. And yet another thing we did was played a game called tetherball and tennis which was a lot of fun.

Welcome to My Father's World

"The heavens declare the glory of God....."

Hi, my name is Jesse. This will be my blog that will glorify God, be about nature, and my own recent nature encounters. I hope that this blog will be of great interest to you and offer you enjoyment. (My sister Sydney took this picture)