a peek inside the fishbowl

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments on yesterday’s post. I’m definitely feeling excited today. :)

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This morning (even before I had my coffee!) I got with the program and made the girls a jar for bug collecting.

ETA: I have a great childhood memory of a friend collecting bees in a glass jar. He did the collecting (of course!) while I stayed a fair distance away. We watched them and listened to their hum, and after awhile it was time to let them go. But how to do it without gettting stung? He opened the lid and rolled the jar down a hill while we huffed it as fast as we could in the opposite direction. Ah, those were the days!

Bug jars are great things. We eschew the cheapo ones from the dollar store and roll our own. (We’ve had those plastic ones, and they’re total crap.)

How to make a bug jar is really no secret: take an empty jar of pasta sauce – and voila – you have a great jar. It’s so simple it hurts. And it’s recyclable!

If you’re going to make one for yourself, know that will be g.d. impossible to get the sticky Label Remnants off of it. But we are one step ahead of the game here at Casa Fishbowl! Long ago Mark and I discovered that orange peel oil will remove any sticky residue. And as a bonus, it leaves the house smelling like a basket of oranges. It is totally no fail.

My jar this morning (remember, I hadn’t had a coffee yet so I was especially slow and uncoordinated) took about two minutes to clean. Now all I have to do is nail a few holes in the lid.

I have always been super proud of the girl’s love of the bug world. It’s something I’ve taken care to cultivate i.e. by stifling my scream as a hairy centipede darts out of the kitchen drain or a mass of rolie-polies scatter from underneath my outdoor flowerpot.

Maybe I should make a jar of my own?