How to Catch, Kill, and Mount Bugs

In my travels I have the opportunity to visit with friends of mine all over the country. A few days ago I had a little extra time to spend with one such friend who is a forensic entomologist. I was able to park next to his home and go in for a little rest stop. In his living room were Styrofoam boards covered with all sorts of insects. They were all dead and mounted in very life like positions. So I asked him about them. He gave me a thumb nail sketch of how to turn poisonous insects into fascinating displays.

How to Catch the Bug...

First, of course, you have to find one. There was a big wolf spider on his living room window and he nodded at it. The first thing he did after that was to get a glass jar and a stiff piece of paper. He carefully approached the spider and quickly trapped it inside the jar. That's where the paper came in. He slid the paper between the glass and the rim of the jar, insuring that the spider would stay put.

How to Kill the Bug...

He took the occupied jar to his table with the paper held securely as a cover. He shook the jar to drop the spider to the bottom of the jar and then reached for the rubbing alcohol. The jar lid was sitting on the same table. He poured the alcohol over the spider, preventing it from jumping (as wolf spiders tend to do) and quickly capped the jar with the proper lid. The spider thrashed around briefly before going dormant.

How to Mount the Bug...

On the same table, he had another jar. This one held an impressive black widow. He told me it had spent several days in the alcohol and was quite dead and ready for mounting. With a very small strainer, he dipped the black widow out of the alcohol and placed it on a piece of paper towel. He got a spider board from the wall and laid it flat on the table. I watched in amazement as he used tweezers and straight pins to put the spider where he wanted it on the board. He managed to extend and position the legs into a natural position, pinning above and below each leg to keep it in place. By the following morning, he told me, the legs would be dried and set. Then he would remove some of the pins while adding one more pin through the middle of the critter to make sure it wouldn't fall off the board when it was re-hung.

I looked at the whole process with awe. I'm not fond of spiders, even dead ones and told him so. He said he had recently found a new species of Black Widow that had striped legs and a flattened hour glass shape on its belly. I asked to see it, but he had sent the actual spider to the University for investigation and classification. He did have some pictures, and showed them to me. What an amazing creature it was!

"Can you do the same thing with any bugs?" I had to ask.

"Not all of them," he said. "You can't put butterflies or moths in the alcohol. They have powdery wings and the alcohol ruins them."

Warning...

If you decide to capture a biting or stinging insect, be very careful. The jar and paper technique works very well, if you know what you're doing. But no specimen is worth getting a poisonous bite that can either sicken or kill you.