Mike Bisaga and Mike Chambers helped out fellow FATC member Michael Brand with the BSA Conservation Night.  This was a night during a week long Boy Scout STEM camp at Beaumont Scout Reservation, that was dedicated to teaching the boys about conservation related subjects. In all, about 10 different conservation related groups participated with displays that included wolf pelts, and various animal tracks.  Mike and Mike had the only living display.  Prior to the event, the FATC team headed to a stream location on the BSA property and took a few aquatic insect sample nets.  The collection included among other things,  mayflys, scuds, leeches, crawfish, caddisflys, beetles, snails, minnows and a small sculpin,.  They took the collections, and displayed it to the boys in a tray with an aerator.  The boys had a chance to get up close, with many of them getting their hands wet playing with the crayfish and leeches.  This was a new experience for all the boys and adults that stopped by the table.  Most people don’t realize how many different types of aquatic insects live in our little local streams.

We had a couple lessons learned for ourselves.

1. when you have a limited quantity of insects to display, don’t put crayfish in the same tank. Your insect population will slowly decrease. The crayfish did pick off a few of our insects before we moved them to their own tank
2. In the absence of rocks or sticks, Mayflys will cling onto ANYTHING they can find.  Our snails were harassed by them all night as they were mistaken for small rocks.  Every snail had 2 or three mayflys clinging on their backs. However, have you ever seen a mayfly riding a minnow?  We did. The picture did come out too well, but we had one of the little buggers that latched onto the back of a minnow and was riding around the tank for about 5 minutes. Not sure I will ever see that again.

Overall, it was a great experience for us as well as the Scouts.