He Means To Bug You -- Entomologist Don Ehlen Shares His Enthusiasm For Insects Through His Traveling Show-And-Tell Safari
At the height of a party on Queen Anne Hill, the sophisticated hostess lowers the lights, drawing a hush that's followed by:
"Oh, my gosh!"
"Oh! Isn't that incredible!"
The party, of course, can be none other than the eighth "Bugs 'n' Beer" led by guest entomologist Don Ehlen of Insect Safari fame.
Ehlen's fantastic bug collection, on this night augmented by his friend Steven Mayerson's colorful "show stoppers," truly leaves our species looking plain.
But for all the shimmering butterflies, tarantulas and bejeweled beetles pinned into place, nothing matches the excitement of Ehlen's live scorpions.
Ehlen sets them out in tiny open-topped aquariums, except for the most deadly, which he keeps in an "earthquake proof" plastic container.
Out go the lights. On comes the black light. And the scorpions magically glow.
"No way! That's amazing."
If you accept that revulsion is a form of fascination, then you'll agree with Ehlen's belief that everyone is fascinated by bugs on some level.
They are beautiful. They are horrible. They are lessons in adaptability. Odds are, they'll take over the world.
"In my view, they already have," says Ehlen, 39.
Ehlen by day shares his enthusiasm with schoolkids through his traveling show-and-tell business, Insect Safari.
He began throwing "Bugs 'n' Beer" parties a half-dozen years ago to satisfy all his friends who asked, "When do we get to see your bug collection?"
"Bugs 'n' Beer" looks like any other party - the hearty drinkers gather in the back yard by the cooler, the sophisticates in the living room by the guitar.
But in the dining room everyone else is nose-to-glass with boxes of dried bugs.
Mayerson, who supports his hobby by driving a cab, sets out his smaller art-quality collection of insects chosen for their beauty.
Ehlen's collection, 34 years in the gathering, is more scientific. Counting the ones he left at home, it numbers close to 4,000 specimens.
Even professional entomologists come - not so much to see the bugs, but to be buoyed by Ehlen's enthusiasm.
Children respond almost exactly the same as adults to the scorpions, cockroach races and Ehlen's amazing bug facts.
Perhaps that's why Ehlen was booked solid this spring as he took his Insect Safari show into classrooms and libraries.
But there's something else at work here.
Insects are said to have an unsurpassed ability to adapt to changing environments. Ehlen's good at it, too.
He's a freethinker who fled his hometown of Anoka, Minn., and finally, at long last, has found his niche.
The kids
At Machias Elementary School, set among pastures east of Everett, Ehlen is showing his collection as part of "A Day of Science."
He wants to get the kids excited about bugs and how science works.
Beyond that, his rebel nature is showing: He wants them to be critical thinkers, to not just accept what's handed to them.
He doesn't lecture. He asks questions.
After explaining to a third-grade class that arthropods - animals with exoskeletons - are the bug world that includes such classes as insects, spiders and millipedes, he asks them what bug they eat for dinner.
"Cockroaches!" "Termites" "Grasshoppers!" are typical answers until Ehlen gives this hint, "It lives in the water."
Finally he gets his answer: shrimp, crab or lobster, which are in the crustacean class of arthropods.
"Those are bugs?" asks the incredulous class, which launches Ehlen into a comic routine:
A man and woman are out for their anniversary dinner. He's dressed in a suit. She's painted her nails. The maitre'd brings champagne.
"What do they eat?" Ehlen demands. "A bug. A bug! Ohhhhhh, this is such a delicious bug!"
The children, still excited, swarm his collection.
Ehlen is pleased when the rare child points out the little red Volkswagen bug pinned in with the beetles or the fisherman's tied fly in with the flies.
"Don't accept everything you see as truth," Ehlen says later in describing his philosophy. "The world is more complicated than that."
He tells them of how he came to capture a male Pelecinid wasp when so few people have them.
He was at a family picnic near the Wisconsin border when he noticed a swarm of female wasps. He deduced that it must be a breeding swarm, which meant there had to be some males about.
Sure enough, he came home with two. Now he has one he could trade, if he could stand to part with it, which he can't.
"Like Pokemon cards?" asks a child.
"Exactly," Ehlen says.
In the cockroach race, the Amazon cockroach clearly is Olympic standard compared to the one from Africa.
Why is that? Ehlen asks, which leads to a discussion about theories and adaptability.
The African cockroach lives in a rotted log. It survives by hiding. It doesn't have to be fast.
The Amazon cockroach must race between food sites on the jungle floor. Only the swift survive to beget swifter babies.
Then Ehlen shuts off the lights and brings out the scorpions.
If there's a practical reason for scorpions to glow under black light - and only scorpions and minerals do - Ehlen has yet to read about it.
"Who discovered it?" asks a boy.
"I don't know," Ehlen says, but he has a wild idea it has something to do with a Volkswagen van in California in the late 1960s.
The children pet live walking sticks and a slug-shaped African millipede, but they recoil as Ehlen brings around his live scorpions.
"Now, scorpions are what type of animal?" he asks.
"Not the type I like," whispers a third-grade girl.
His life
Ehlen, dressed as a Bolivian dung beetle, once pushed a large papier-mache dung ball in the Fremont Solstice Parade.
How did he get to that point - after growing up in Garrison Keillor's conventional Minnesota hometown?
The hard way.
When he was 5, his parents gave him the "Golden Guide to Insects." When he was 6, he got a butterfly net.
He checked out Charles S. Bronson's "Beetle Book" over and over, reproducing drawings.
But if his passion was clear, his path was not.
His interest in science was seen as a nice hobby but no way to make a living.
In college, he took sociology, paleontology, botany, any science that interested him.
Peers and family told him to pick something and let the rest go. But he couldn't.
In the end, he came out educated but with no degree.
He thought about going into research, but knew he'd balk if asked to do something that didn't make sense to him.
He loved the idea of teaching, but knew he'd never survive the conformity.
He kicked around the country, cleaning aquariums for a living and showing his bug collection as a hobby.
"You know," friends told him, "schools will pay you to do this."
Evolution! Suddenly, how he'd lived his life made sense.
Maybe that's why the importance of adaptability is one of Ehlen's big messages.
The world has to have room for creative and deep thinkers, he says, but people with different ideas get pushed aside.
Having varied thoughts or behavior within a species or culture is critically important in allowing us to adopt new ways.
Change is always needed. The environment doesn't stay static. It just feels that way for a small-town boy with big ideas.
The bugs
"Does anybody know how many different kinds of insects there are?" Ehlen asks the Machias students.
"Thousands."
"That's not the right answer."
"Well, let's see. There are spiders and . . . "
"That's not the right answer."
"164."
"I have more than that right here. The answer is nobody knows."
In the past 250 years, nearly 1 million insects have been identified. Estimates of how many there are range from a low of 2 million to 10 million to a high of 100 million.
Some scientists say 95 percent of the species on this planet are insects and one in every four animals is a beetle.
There are insects that survive in water too hot for us to touch and insects that have been dipped in liquid helium (minus 270 degrees Celsius) for five minutes and come back with a 100 percent survival rate.
We are fascinated by insects because of what writer E.O. Wilson calls "biophilia," Ehlen says. As former hunter-gatherers, our interest in the natural world has been key to our survival.
There's another element at work now, too: consumerism.
Ehlen captures most of his specimens, often on annual trips to the desert, and buys others, many raised domestically.
He usually pays only $2 to $15 for a bug, but a newspaper clipping on Ehlen's refrigerator tells of thieves who stole 86 "black diamond" beetles in Japan worth $780 a piece.
Very rare specimens are worth many thousands of dollars, which may be why two Australians were caught trying to eradicate a species to corner the market.
At the Bugs 'n' Beer party, where hostess Diane Brockerick wears a live walking stick in her hair, people gather around Ehlen to hear his amazing stories.
He tells about a wasp that ensures a fresh food supply for its young by paralyzing a tarantula. The grub eats away all the nonessential organs, keeping the hapless tarantula alive until the grub pupates and becomes a wasp.
He tells about a male Parnassian butterfly that leaves behind a plug or chastity belt after mating so there won't be sperm competition from other males.
"Oh, you missed the glow-in-the-dark scorpions!" a man says as his girlfriend enters the room. He then demonstrates his love by begging Ehlen to show them again.
"OK," says Ehlen. "More cheap bug thrills." ------------------------------- Insect asides:
Don Ehlen and his collection will appear at "The Bugs are Coming to Capitol Hill," a musical/insect event at the French European Artistic and Cultural Center, 623 Broadway E., Seattle, starting at 2 p.m. June 19.
Ehlen's Insect Safari, entomological presentations at schools, field trips and parties. 206-329-7141.
In addition to Woodland Park Zoo's Bug World, a special exhibit, Butterflies & Blooms, is open through September for $1 above regular admission. A children's event, Bug-a-Boo, will be held 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 23.
The Pacific Science Center has a Tropical Butterfly House and Insect Village, which promises to leave visitors "bug-eyed" after they meet the inhabitants inside their habitats. Call 206-443-2001 or visit http://www.pacsci.org.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture has a bug wall featuring hundreds of varieties of Washington insects. A children's bug day, "Bug Blast at the Burke," is Sept. 12. The Burke is on the University of Washington campus at Northeast 45th Street and 17th Avenue Northeast, Seattle. Call 206-543-7907 or a 24-hour recorded line at 206-543-5590. Web site: www.washington.edu/burkemuseum.
The Scarabs Bug Society usually meets at the Burke Museum classroom every fourth Monday at 7 p.m. Call Sharon Collman at 206-364-6966 or e-mail her at collmans@wsu.edu or call Rod Crawford, the Burke's spider and insect man, at 206-543-9853. Crawford also speaks to schools.