Bagging Big Bugs: How to Identify, Collect and Display the Largest and Most Colorful Insects of the Rocky Mountain Region



		Bagging Big Bugs: How to Identify, Collect and Display the Largest and Most Colorful Insects of the Rocky Mountain Region by Whitney Cranshaw and Boris Kondratieff This companion to Creepy Crawlies provides an in-depth guide to bug collection from northern New Mexico to southern Canada. Through text and photographs, Bagging Big Bugs details the life histories, habits, and distribution of more than 100 insects and provides tips about insect collecting, rearing, and displaying methods. ISBN 1-55591-178-1 Grades 5 and up 5 x 8, 336 pages b/w illust., photos $16.95 paperback Bugs and blisters. What do they have in common? Well, nothing, except they happen to be subjects of new books on insects and backpacking you might want to check out. Bagging Big Bugs (Fulcrum Publishing, $16.95, 310 pages) is a practical guide written by a couple of the state's top entomologists, Whitney Cranshaw and Boris Kondratieff, both associate professors at Colorado State University. If there is a drawback it's that the photos are black and white. Most of us need our bugs in color to identify them. That aside, it is a guide to finding, identifying, collecting, rearing or displaying most of the larger and more colorful insects in the Rocky Mountain region between Canada and New Mexico. It includes information on the life histories of the insects, their habits and related species. It has a number of information boxes, including one on such edible insects as grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, certain caterpillars, shore flies, cicadas, salmon flies, yellow jackets and ants. American Indians found insects to be an important food source. They roasted grasshoppers and, since they preserved well, set them aside for winter snacks. Yummy. The authors also point out that of all western wildlife, it's the insects that most often choose to share a home with us. In winter, it's boxelder bugs, elm leaf beetles, leaffooted bugs and cluster flies. During cool, wet weather in spring and fall, it's millipedes, sowbugs and pillbugs. In hot weather, insects drawn to moisture in the house are strawberry root weevils, centipedes, scorpions, springtails and camel crickets. In my house, it's the yellow jackets that have become year-round house guests that in true Kato-style never leave. Gary GerhardtNature Watch Rocky Mountain News