"Today in the Outdoor Classroom..."

...we performed a play.

Well, our Naturalists did, anyway. And what a play it was! One hundred percent the work of the students, "The Four Seasons" was a lovely, four act production that took us through the school year from Fall into the future that will be Summer.( I did not take photos, but I think some teachers did; hopefully they'll be shared with you.)

A stick named Jeremy played a central, if brief role. There were "stupid" chipmunks arguing with "dumb" squirrels about the best way to store food for the winter (single, large caches or scatter hoarding?), there were fat sleepy bears, the best-costumed hibernating slug I've ever seen: "What time is it?" "It's springtime!" "Ahhh I'm late for my job interview!" Adult birds debated, in [ahem] fowl language "You cheeping think that grass is better than sticks?! Are you cheeping stupid!?" Baby birds were gently encouraged (by parents) and violently shoved out of their nests (by siblings). Summer left the audience with questions like, what's next and, "do you want some ice cream?" 

There were costumes, props, and so much passion. Every single role was played to perfection from narrator to aloof tween (who really did want in on the action!), the salamander looking for a cozy spot on the riverbank, Tarzan (?) and all of the birds, bears, chipmunks... What a show!

In our world trees spoke human languages, and wonder was everywhere. The audience was off their seats (literally) with excitement and the players got a standing ovation (that had to be calmed down by several teachers).

It has been an incredible year working with your young Naturalists. I am moved by the questions they asked, the attention they showed and the things that they learned even when it seemed like they weren't paying attention. This has been a year of wonder and experience for me too; I can't wait until next year when I get to put what I've learned into practice in Naturalist Club!

Please keep encouraging your Naturalists to pay attention to the creeping, crawling, buzzing, slimy, grimy, stinky, perfumy things out there. We humans are, despite our best efforts, still a part of the natural world and the more we know about it, the better members of our ecosystem we will be. 

I think I started the year off with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe, "To observe attentively is to remember distinctly." A concept all naturalists embrace. I'll end with one he also wrote, “...a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.” 

It is easy for me as an adult to overuse the word, "just" to describe something. "Just a slug; just a sparrow, just a child." Our Naturalists have reminded me that great truths are easily hidden behind that word, I plan to look closer at the "seemingly irrelevant." 

...we were all Alice. (The stage is still set up for the Middle School production of Alice in Wonderland, which featured at least three Alices.)

And we went into wonderland. After exercising our dramatic muscles we checked in on some slug friends. "Why do their heads disappear when you poke them?!" Probably the same reason we recoil when someone pokes us in the eye. Of course that led to an interesting conversation about sensing the world, can slugs see? Does it count as seeing if they can only really tell dark from light?  (Yes.) Here's something I just learned. Slug brains have light-detectors on them. Their brains can see independently of their eyes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrnH9zklmQ

Our little mollusk friends may be slow moving, but their ability to sense light, may be older than eyes themselves. Once you get over the oozing mucous, slugs turn out to be pretty fascinating. I'm glad they poked the slug (it didn't seem perturbed like a bear) and asked about the response. I learned something!

Speaking of bears...someone was asking about the other name for water bears. It just popped into my head: Tardigrades. Now there's a fascinating organism! Sadly unlike in Star Trek, they're not capable of helping us travel through space-time.

Have fun outside and enjoy the wonderland!

IMAGE: SEM image of Milnesium tardigradum in active state. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045682.g001

..I had so much fun talking about aphids, ants and aphid poo! It's easy to know your audience when your sense of humor still involves (ahem)scatological jokes. Ba dum chhh. (Look it up; it'll be funny; let's just say it's another poop joke.)

What I'm excited that our scientists pointed out is this tiny wasp. It's called Diplazon laetatorius. Most people call it a Common Hover Fly Parasitoid Wasp. I call it possiblythemostamazingwaspyou'vneverheardof! 

Learn more about some of our "Yellow Stripey Things" here:

https://kerrysnature.org/a-better-guide-to-yellow-stripey-things/ 

(Written by my friend, mentor and colleague Kerry Wixted.)

This little wasp—probably a female as I'll explain later—is a terrifying monster. If you happen to be a hover fly. She is the thing horror stories  are inspired by, and her babies are even worse! If you're a human person, she's not interested.

These wasps sting the larvae (i.e. the offspring) of an adorable yellow and black-striped fly called a hover fly (see images). It turns out that our hover fly, also called a flower fly is pretty interesting too. So I'll go back to the milkweed plant we found this wasp on and explain what's going on.

We discovered the aphid-covered milkweed plants and noticed all the ants who, like the cowboys and security guards they are, were rounding up and defending the honeydew excreting little cows. One of the things the ants may have been protecting their aphid herds from is the maggot (larvae) of a flower fly. A fly who, smartly, looks like a bee as an adult and eats nectar while pollinating flowers. It isn't a bee, but the mimicry is effective at keeping it safe from most people who don't like bees and things smart enough not to eat bees. As larvae, some flower flies are predators who eat soft bodied animals like aphids (others are scavengers who hatch inside wasp or bee nests and eat the dead animals they find there--I can't make up stuff this good!). 

The reason we found our mother wasp is that she probably was in search of a fly larva to lay her eggs in. I've seen adult flies in the OC, so she may have been lucky. Once she finds a host and injects her eggs she's done and moves on. But her babies grow and hatch, and then eat their way out of the living pupa. Oh, and the reason I say that this one is probably a mother—females in this species of wasp don't need males to reproduce. If there's one around, fine, but through parthenogenesis she can just do what needs doing.

So on one little milkweed leaf we have:

• Insects that are born pregnant and suck the sugar out of leaves like first graders drinking juice from a box

• Ants acting like cowboys, security guards and delivery drivers carrying aphid excrement back to their nests

• A wasp who can reproduce all by herself and who lays her eggs inside a juvenile fly who may be trying to eat the pregnant aphids.

That's just one leaf. 

IMAGE: Sample from Malaise trap, Aranda, ACT, Australia, 18-25 March 2022