I used to really love insects when I was little. I constantly took out books about them at the library. I read about them, I drew them…and of course, I spent many a warm day hunting them down. I guess that was pretty mean, as they mostly all died in jars. But it was a fascination, and it pissed me off that they died, even if I knew enough about them to know that they wouldn’t make it very long trapped inside.
I loved all insects, but butterflies were my favorite kind. I loved them enough that whenever I got birthday cards they always all had butterflies on them haha.
One thing I loved doing was catching caterpillars and getting them to turn into butterflies. I took a salad bowl and filled it with dirt, branches and stuff, and put a strainer on top. The caterpillar(s) goes inside. They make cocoons and then you get butterflies.
This only worked with a few kinds though. The mourning cloak was great for that, but a lot of caterpillars let themselves die when contained. For some reason, nocturnal butterfly caterpillars never worked.
Also sometimes, I’d have caterpillars that had been visited by some kind of predatory insect like a wasp, the kind that lays its egg on the caterpillar. So inside the cocoon, the wasp egg hatches and the larva eats the insides, and that comes out as the adult wasp instead of the butterfly. Also once I had two caterpillars who made their cocoons too close to one another and it became this disturbing Siamese butterfly with too many legs, like five wings and it flew around all crooked and kept crashing into things. :/
It was my hobby back then, although some of it was disturbing. XD Caught insects in Summer, drew them in Winter. And I wasn’t scared of any of them. I could even catch wasps and bumblebees without getting stung. Granted, I got stung, bit and puked on by bugs many times, but I shrugged it off. that’s how I’m so badass now But some stinging insects I eventually got tricks to capture without being hurt. Like big bumblebees, when they’re on a flower, you grab the whole thing in your fist, so all the petals and leaves and whatnot prevent the bee from moving around so much, then you grab it by the wings.
I looked under rocks, and I loved aquatic insects too, although those were nearly impossible for me to ever catch. Went sprinting after butterflies, or stealthy attempted to capture them when they weren’t flying. Got made fun of by kids all the time though haha.
Eventually though, I discovered video games, and that’s probably a good thing, since I’m sadly responsible for a lot of insect death in my young life. :/ Anyways, the games took over, but I still have a great interest in insects. The only thing I didn’t want to handle then, and still don’t, are worms. I don’t even get where that fear comes from. What with all the bugs I messed with, worms shouldn’t even be a problem. :/ But they are lol.