Today I experiment with pinning - poking pins into my dead bugs. Gross. And surprisingly hard.
Most of my bugs are beetles which do have two pairs of wings, but the top wings are hardened into elytra. Not only are they slippery and hard to get leg side down, it is really hard to poke hole in them with a pin! The flip and scitter all over the place before I get a hole into the elytra and then if it's not straight, I have to do it again. Ugh.
For butterflies, moths, dragonflies and some other insect orders I am supposed to pin them with their wings spread which you have to carefully manipulate and hold in place with strips of paper without actually touching the wings so the scales do not come of.
I pinned all the fresh dead bugs I have that are big. The small ones I have to do differently and all the crunchy dry ones I have to rehydrate, but so far so good.
This dragonfly, though tough to kill (read the previous post), looks pretty bad@ss pinned like this. It's metallic blue and I still haven't identified it.
Most of my bugs are beetles which do have two pairs of wings, but the top wings are hardened into elytra. Not only are they slippery and hard to get leg side down, it is really hard to poke hole in them with a pin! The flip and scitter all over the place before I get a hole into the elytra and then if it's not straight, I have to do it again. Ugh. 
For butterflies, moths, dragonflies and some other insect orders I am supposed to pin them with their wings spread which you have to carefully manipulate and hold in place with strips of paper without actually touching the wings so the scales do not come of.
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Ha - I saw the title of your post and thought of Pinterest. I'm amused and delighted that you are pinning dead bugs as opposed to household cleaning tips, recipes, and craft projects for kids.
ReplyDeleteI laughed out loud when I read your comment. I am familiar with Pinterest, but I do not have the time to waste time pinning things I am never going to have time to do :)
ReplyDeleteI have gotten ideas off of it... but I am not interested enough in "pinning" to make my own account.
Pinning insects is going well... so well I am out of pins (and I had 100).