Pulaski Elementary School student Amelia Cox is not your average 10-year-old. The fourth-grade daughter of Chad and Amanda Cox of Draper, Amelia earned recognition recently at the Hokie Bug Fest at Virginia Tech, earning first place with her insect collection.
“I’ve been interested in bugs for about five months,” she said. “I like how they were all different shapes and sizes and colors. I thought it was interesting how you pinned them and how it looked. I also thought it would be something cool to have when I get older.”
She explained that she found most of her bugs at the Draper Golf Course, but some have been found in other areas.
“I found one at the Ice Age Scenic Trail in Wisconsin and one in Iowa at the Field of Dreams,” she said.
“The first insect I got was this lopsided firefly,” she said as she showed it. “I was at the Hokie Bug Camp. That’s where I got into bugs and found my first three bugs. I went home and started looking for more bugs, and that’s where I found my first butterfly.”
So, what is the Hokie Bug Camp?
“Hokie Bug Camp is a thing for kids to do,” she explained. “You got to a trail, and you look for bugs. They give you a little set you can use one time with a net, a little carrier, and a jar you can use to peak through and get a closer at them and see what they look like. I caught three, and then they showed us how to kill and pin them.”
She went on to explain how to euthanize the insects and the process of pinning them with a marker explaining what they are, along with where and when they were caught.
“The trail was about 30 minutes of the camp,” she said. “I’ve got an ant in here too.” As she pointed to her perfectly presented ant.
She went on to explain what some of the bugs were.
“This one is a stick bug,” she said. “Fun fact: it’s only the second known stick bug on record as found in this area. I found it on our way back from a trip.”
“Another fun fact,” she said. “I was just running around my yard and found this one (as she pointed to a large moth in her collection) on the side of our wall. I saw it and was like, hey, there’s a huge moth on the side of our wall. Mom came down and looked. It was brown but I thought it was cool looking. When we pinned it, that’s when we saw the colors and markings on it.”
She pointed at another moth and began explaining it.
“This one’s a Luna Moth,” she said. “It’s also known as the American Moon Moth. They don’t have mouths, and their sole purpose in life is to reproduce. What they also do is use the big markings on their wings to scare off predators. They look like eyes, so it scares them off.”
She moved to her cicadas next.
“This one is from the type that come out in the spring and summer but don’t go in the ground,” she explained. “It’s also called a Hemiptera.”
Her next insect looked familiar as well.
“That’s a Hercules Beatle,” she said pointing at an insect that looked straight out of a Disney movie. “That’s the female. The male has a big horn on its nose.”
She had insects ranging from bees to grasshoppers to anything you can imagine. One had more legs than we could count.
“That’s a type of centipede,” she said. “You’re not supposed to pin them, but we found this one dead already so it’s ok. It looks really cool. Did you know some of them are actually poisonous if you touch them?”
She moved on to another insect that really excited her.
“This is my favorite bug in this whole box,” she said. “This is a Dobson Fly. It’s scientific order is the Megaloptera. I think this one looks really cool.”
“This is a Hummingbird Moth,” she said. “I found this one on the ground with my dad and thought it was dead. But when I touched it, it started moving a little. So my dad went and got an empty blueberry thing and we put it in there.”
Amelia also has an older sister. She’s not as much a fan of the insects.
“She’s 18 and in college now,” Amelia explained. “She tried it when she was younger but was not a fan.”
One moth in her collection wasn’t one she captured herself, but she was very proud to show it off.
“This is the Madagascar Sunset Moth,” she said. “It’s known because it’s the only moth that comes out during the day. Mr. Dan Capps caught it. He told me to go look at his box one time when we were in Wisconsin. He asked me what I thought about it and I told him I really liked it. The colors are really vibrant. There’s a blue butterfly that has colored that are like fluorescent. But I told him I really liked his moth, and he said he’s mail it to me. Sure enough, a month later it showed up in the mail.”
After spending time learning about and collecting insects for a while, Amelia entered the Hokie Bug Fest.
“Hokie Bug Fest is where you take a box where you collect your 50 best bugs and display them,” she said. “They look at all of the boxes and they judge them. When it was all over I had first place. I actually have 57 bugs in mine.”
It can take a lot of time and effort to put together a big collection like this.
“It took about five months to catch all of these,” she said. “It was kind of rough and kind of not rough to decide which ones to use. Here’s something about these two (she points to two of her insects). These are invasive species. They are true bugs. Anytime you see them, smash them. They get into the grapes and trees and really hurt them.”
“I’m excited to do this again next year,” she said. “You can’t use any of the bugs again, so you have to catch all new ones. I caught a really cool beetle last week, and that’s crazy because it was cold outside. I’d like to have at least 60 new bugs in my next big box.”
Amelia has hopes of continuing her study of insects.
“I’d like to get into entimology,” she said. “I want to catch them and study them. That would be a great job to have.”
“I want to go to the Amazon rain forest with my mom and discover a new type of bug,” she said. “I’d like to find a new type of beetle that no one has ever seen, or at least a fossil of one. Did you know, I read in a book that there is a dragon fly that was really big that went extinct like a few thousand years ago. The picture showed it compared to a human and I was like wow!”
She quickly jumped back into telling me about more of her bugs.
“Guess how long some bugs can live? (I guessed two years) Twenty years! Seriously. A termite queen can live 20 years. This is one I found in Iowa. It’s called the Beloria Belogna. (I confirmed the name with her, knowing nothing about them myself) It makes me think of bologna and a sandwich.”
What is she up to now while she’s collecting insects for her next box?
“We have a pet praying mantis,” she said. “She laid eggs in an egg sack. Do you know how many eggs they lay? Take a wild guess. (I guessed 100). They lay 200 to 500 eggs! I’ll have enough to pin them as they grow up to show the complete life cycle as they grow. I’ll also give a few to my friends to have as pets, and we’ll have one or two as class pets. Then we’ll let most of them loose outside the house. They can live up to two years!”
“I think more people should get into this,” she said. “They should definitely do this. It’s a fun and interesting experience. You learn so much and you meet some really fun people.”
See more photos from our visit with Amelia at this LINK.