The Beetle Barn

As a mother who values education, I am always a sucker at stores that sell educational toys. Last August, when we were school shopping, we made our usual check-in at the Discovery Channel Store and saw that they were closing and everything was on sale at a deep discount! What good mother could resist? Well, one thing they still had plenty of on the shelves were the "Beetle Barns." They looked so cute with the bright plastic red barns and the clear silos. Witnessing metamorphosis - well that must be a milestone for every future scientist to pass! We bought it and a couple weeks later, sent off for the free live insects.

Well, they came as promised, mealworms in the mail, and there were dozens of them. We put them in the barn with their bran and sliced carrots. It was exciting to see them shedding their exoskeletons and eating and growing. After school every day, all three kids would gather around, watching them intently, renaming them, giving them their slices of carrots. Even Ivy was entranced and would walk around saying "Meeoh - wherm! Meeoh - wherm!"

What a surprise when we got home from The Grand Canyon to find several pupaes and a couple newly hatched darkling beetles. Now they were crawling and they were officially insects and my feminine side was getting creeped out a little bit.

One morning before school, Eli and Ivy had been analyzing the latest beetle stages at the kitchen counter, when an arm went flying, and the whole beetle barn did too! Larvae and pupae everywhere!!! Those mealworms crawl unbelievably fast, and the beetles are hard to catch.

That was when I decided on the "Mealworms on Wheels" program. I let the other kids in Eli's K-prep class each take a week with the Beetle Barn. I was sharing for educational purposes, of course. Truly, I am so magnanimous.

When we got them back last week, all the mealworms had turned into pupaes. And finally, a couple days ago, the very last pupae hatched into the adult beetle.

Yesterday, when no children were around I stuck the entire beetle silo in the freezer. That's what happens in nature when winter comes anyway, right?? And I'm not allowed to set them loose in the wild even if I wanted to because darkling beetles are registered pests. (No wonder they were free!)

Lizzie saw them after I removed them from their tomb, and was sad. "They didn't get to lay any eggs!" I told her they did, but they're too small to even see. She really wanted to see the whole life cycle start over again. I count it good enough that we made it through once!

Lesson learned: Mom is not ready for real pets in the family!