The good, the bad, and the bugly

The Department of Entomology at Cornell University hosts an annual insect fair known as Insectapalooza. We drove down to Ithaca yesterday for Insectapalooza 2012 - "The Good, The Bad, and The Bugly." There were lots of insects and people in Comstock Hall, and none of the insects bugged me as much as the people; very quickly I experienced crowd overload and had to retreat to non-populated corners from time to time.

The insects were fascinating, and we enjoyed talking with the enthusiastic and knowledgeable students who staffed the event. Here is James holding an Australian Stick Insect:

 Aidan made friends with both a male and a female stick insect:

Although there are no photos to prove it, I also held one of the stick insects. No, really, I did! They are fascinating creatures and I can see (pun intended) how they could hide in plain sight on the side of a tree.

Thanks to James, Aidan ended up with another representative of the stick insect family on his head:

Pay no attention to the sign in the background of the photo - that is a Madagascar hissing Cockroach on Aidan's hand and not a tarantula:

Aidan must not have posed any perceived threat because he was not on the receiving end of a hiss. He also got to hold a praying mantis:

 ...and put his arm into a container full of ladybugs:

When we had seen all that we wanted to see and had our fill of the crowds, we stopped by Ithaca Bakery for lunch before heading out to Ithaca Beer Co.'s new taproom. Opened just over a week ago, the taproom offers pints of beer, flights of beer (tasting samples) and retail sales of beer, with both indoor and outdoor seating.

We enjoyed a flight of their hoppiest beers:

We also got a growler to go of Flower Power, which is our favorite Ithaca Beer brew.

Bugs + beer = a fun day in Ithaca.

Squirrel on wheels

The leaves are a-changing and the squirrels are busier than ever, scampering around to hide the acorns from our neighbors' oak tree. Not only do we have those big reddish brown squirrels, we also have smaller black squirrels, who rather resemble minks in color but do not live in fear of becoming outerwear.

And now we also have a blue squirrel on wheels:

Meet Rocky, who joined our household on Monday. When we returned from our recent trip to Canada, I learned that I had won a contest on Ravelry. Heather (OregonGrl on Ravelry) ran a contest on her web site, little green fox, to win an adorable knitted squirrel on wheels. She knit Rocky from a pattern in Anna Hrachovec's book Knitting Mochimochi.

Rocky is just too stinkin' adorable.

Unlike the other squirrels who run around our yard, Rocky will not eat all the sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder nor taunt Lily, the Pug next door who thinks she is a Rottweiler.