It would be really funny to take a close-up picture or two of the front of my car, where there is now a large community of smashed bugs, and see how many insect splats the kids in my next Nature Camp are able to identify. Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to have this be one of the works they do, but I do appreciate the irony of carrying out such an idea at a Montessori school where we catch insects we find inside to release them back outdoors.
Not too long ago, I read about a company that’s doing studies on how the insect population is at risk due to the number of bugs killed by moving vehicles. They’ve gone so far as to enlist people to count the number of insects squashed on their car after a drive and report it to them as part of their research. I find this rather amusing in a what-the-heck-are-people-thinking sort of way.
A while ago I saw a poster and a T-shirt that had different bird poop splats on it and the feathered fowl responsible for each particular plop. That matching activity would be another unusual exercise to try with the kids at school. I suppose I could even use some of the same pictures of the front of my car, as the insects squashed and the bird poop are sometimes in quite close proximity.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s some environmental scientist, mathematics or physics professor interested in studying the wildlife that is sprawled out across the front of my car before I wash it. Maybe there’s more to those carwash fundraisers than it would seem at first glance. Perhaps they’re really being held as physics or biology experiments cleverly disguised as fundraisers for the band or athletic boosters.
After all, life is like a windshield full of squished bugs, you never know what you’re gonna get.
