Q: How did you get started with bugs?
I can’t say that I know when it started for me. I’ve always been fascinated with the odd, the unusual and the strange. It was never dogs and cats and the usual creatures that occupy most people’s ideas as pets. And “yes”, I am also a sci-fi fan. I guess that has something to do with it too. The invertebrate world is full of bizarre alien beings that are around us every day. Most people just don’t take the time to notice. Of course, you would need a magnifying glass or microscope to notice much of it but for those who take the time, the world is a very different place to us. These are the things I noticed at a very young age. I loved dinosaurs too but they were all gone. Invertebrates were right in the backyard.
Q: How did you get the idea for the DVD?
When the creepy crawly zoo first came into being I had noticed something immediately. I had wanted to create a program that shared all the reasons to appreciate entomology. I wanted to share all the incredible things I had witnessed as a student of entomology that went on all around us every day that few ever took the time to notice. Awesome acts of nature that all you had to do to witness was stop and open your eyes. I wanted to bring that to the classroom. Theory and practice are often very different. Sure invertebrates can thrive in a terrarium and continue generation after generation. I got to see it all the time but during a 50min visit there were no guarantees students would see anything. I would often leave a school feeling I had fallen short of my goal.
The beginning of the CCZ was a work in progress. I mean no one had ever really done what I had set out to do. There was no road map to follow and I was making it up as I went along. I learned many things in that time. I couldn’t rely on the animals to be the show – I had to be the show. Well, back in the first years I was still learning what animals worked and what ones did not. I also learned about USDA regulations on plant pests. I had ordered a shipment of insects and in it was a tarantula hawk. A wasp that preys on tarantulas. With the wasp was a tarantula that had apparently been caught with the wasp. So I separated the two and since I didn’t have a tarantula at the time I gave it its own terrarium and posed its legs and for a month no one knew the difference. The wasp died shortly after arriving. So I had the paralyzed tarantula and didn’t know what to do with it really.
Two months later I received another tarantula hawk. I had a paralyzed tarantula and a living wasp. At the time I did not believe the tarantula was going to recover. So I prepared a gallon jar with wet sandy soil. I put the tarantula and the wasp together in a small terrarium. I mean why not? Well folks, many years later I had read things about parasitic wasps that early naturalists have written that I can completely relate to. Darwin even used the ichneumonid wasp as an argument against the existence of god. Saying that a benevolent god would never create such a creature. If the movie ALIENS freaks you out realize that we have our own little aliens right here on earth. It was awful to watch. From the moment I put the wasp in with the tarantula, there was instant recognition. That tarantula paralyzed or not, moved. It moved for all it was worth and tried to stand up. It hadn’t moved for two months but upon seeing the wasp it raised its body up. I did not expect to see the incredible effort on the part of the tarantula to resist. I really thought it was closer to death. You don’t have to be a Bug Whisperer to recognize fear in a spider. I immediately started to regret this experiment. That poor tarantula’s effort was heartbreaking to watch. I felt my stomach sink realizing that the tarantula was fully aware of what was about to happen. Before I could react it was over. The wasp had stung the tarantula and now it was completely immobilized. I put the two in the jar of wet sandy soil and watched the wasp dig a burrow, drag the tarantula down and lay an egg on it. For 6wks I watched the larvae devour the tarantula and then pupate. It was an incredible thing to witness. I started to wonder how many people in the world would ever be witness to what I was seeing. Very few imagine. It all started to bother me as to how I could share what I was seeing. You could be the greatest storyteller in the world and not do justice to this event. I mean I wanted to share this. I wanted to plant the images of my experience in the minds of all the students I visited. This was why I loved what I did. This was it. I wanted to share all the things I was privy to witness in terrariums and on hikes or in my own backyard every day that never happened when I went to a school. It ate at me and itched in my brain how to do this in my program and I realized then the only way to share what I saw was to let others see it too. Video was the answer.
Q: How did the Bug Whisperer character develop?
I had grown up watching Jack Hanna on TV. He was great. There was a new show that had just started called Kratt’s Creatures and I became a huge fan of that one too. There was also my favorite educational program of all time Bill Nye the Science guy. I thought a show that combined the best elements of all these shows together would rock. Likable host, fast paced action, special effects and cheesy humor how cool would that be? I bought a $300 SVHS in a pawn shop and started traveling everywhere with it. To this day some of the best things I have ever filmed were with that camera. It took 10 years of filming everything I could before I decided to step in front of the camera.
Performing for a live audience and talking to a camera are very different. I can speak to an audience of 1000 people, make them laugh and scream and take control of their attention. Speaking to a camera was to me like standing in a corner and telling jokes to the wall. Watching myself on playback was just painful. It did not come across the same way on video. You could fix things and make them more interesting with some creative editing but it wasn’t coming across how I wanted it to.
So one day on a filming excursion with an old college roommate, he got frustrated with me and very bluntly said, “Dude you are boring me to death. For the love of god just do something! Eat something! Do a cartwheel. You have competition like Erwin and Corwin. If you want this to work turn it up!” So I did. I turned it up so much that I felt like a cartoon in front of the camera. I felt silly but I went for it. So later when logging tapes and taking notes I came across the scene in the video where I went diving into the water. That was the scene we filmed with him pushing me to turn it up. Well on video, as silly as I had felt, it looked great! It was exactly what I had in my head. I had finally learned what needed to be done. I have to admit though, in filming the rest of the DVD it wasn’t easy. There were things I had to do even when just filming alone that felt beyond weird and I hoped that my neighbors couldn’t see me. Standing in front of a green screen dressed like a talk show host talking to an audience that wasn’t there in my apartment… well, you get the idea. Filming the Meleos commercial was another scene I was glad no one could see me doing. I had no training for this but I just went for it and eventually, Tales from the Bug Whisperer came to fruition.
If you have more questions please email them to bugwhisperer@creepycrawlyzoo.com
Every once in a while, you make contact with someone and it is the beginning of something special. In 2007 I received a call to perform at a school in Illinois, Isaac Fox Elementary. In every case, throughout the last 20yrs, whoever is in charge of programming changes hands fairly often. I may attend a school several years in a row and then in the changing of the position my information does not get passed on. I may get a call from a school that I have been to many times before, but the person calling had never even heard of me prior and it was just by chance, they had called. This has not been the case with Isaac Fox Elementary.
Tales from the Bug Whisperer 