It was mighty windy and cold in Bridgton yesterday but the kids had a great time serving as bug detectives.

The girls are Juliette (independent) Girl Scouts this year and attended an outdoor workshop at Camp Pondicherry. We went out on a nature hike to look for insects and found lots of interesting stuff despite the cold temperatures.

One of the items we found in abundance were round, leaf-like balls. The girls couldn't resist cracking open the fragile balls to see what was inside, which was basically nothing. The leader, nor any of the other adults, knew exactly what we had found so if you do, post a comment. We'd really like to know!

The ball felt like a leaf and was paper-thin - L. cracked several by mistake when she squeezed too hard.

The group returned to the indoor classroom after our hike with a bunch of acorns the instructor had asked them to collect as well as a slug, worm and ant found by some of the other girls. The workshop leader asked the group to put their acorns in a glass of water and to discard the ones that sank to the bottom. The ones that floated were then cracked open to see if there was a weevil (insect) inside. Only 1 in the 18 acorns collected actually contained a weevil but the girls thoroughly enjoyed cracking open the nuts.

Neither L. or G. had acorns with a weevil but they vowed to search our rural backyard for acorns in hopes of finding one for themselves.

If you're interested in conducting your own experiment, which both my kids enthusiastically recommend everyone should try, check out these informative, easy-to-follow directions.

Looking for acorn weevils

Let us know what you find...

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