Abyss, the darkling beetle

One of the cool things about homeschooling is that you can incorporate your life into your learning… and your learning into your life. This is a case of the first instance. My nine-year-old daughter insisted on picking up a large black beetle when we were hiking at Pogonip and bringing it back with us. She has always enjoyed keeping bugs captive and studying their behavior. This one, however, has worked out more longterm – she’s survived 5 weeks. We’ve all come to have quite an affection for the little creature, who eats oats, does tricks like walking a tightrope (though not on command), and seems to enjoy crawling all over my daughter’s arm.

Following is the “assignment” my daughter completed based on Abyss and research she did. Note that I didn’t have to “assign” this at all – I made a suggestion that she could do something with the research she’d done on Abyss, and this is what she came up with. It was the perfect homeschooling moment.

The Life of Abyss, the Darkling Beetle

Hello, my name is Abyss. I am a female darkling beetle. I was born in a grassy, rocky area of California called Pogonip. That was the place that I lived for a very long time, and there my story begins.

I am currently a larva, or wireworm. I hatched from an egg a day or two ago that my mother laid. It took me about 18 days to hatch. It was uncomfortable in the egg—I was all curled up.

I wriggle and squiggle underground where I have burrowed. I know that my time soon will come where I will turn into a pupa, which is my resting stage. I wait a few more weeks underground, and soon I start to transform. It happened suddenly to me one day when I woke up. It was kind of scary and I couldn’t move anymore. I had a hard shell-like thing where my head should be and it was very uncomfortable.

 

I wait like this for a few weeks. One day I feel that I might able to move again. I try. I come out of the awful shell I was in, except I’m not a larva! I’m a darkling beetle. I walk up above ground, and stare at the sun. It seems like a long time ago that I stared at the sun when I first hatched. I’m currently white, and I have wings except when I try to flap them, they’re all fused together. I can’t open them. I try every day of my life to open these wings, but they’ll never open. I guess they’ll just stay fused together.

Some of my friends and some of my brothers and sisters are also out there. They are also white and their wings are also fused together. We play for a while, then we grow bored.

In a couple of days’ time I have turned brown. I start having to forage for my own wild grains, grass, and other things like that. A couple days later I am completely black with a hard shell covering my back. I am about 2 centimeters long.

Hikers at Pogonip pass me and one nearly squashes me. I crawl out of the way just in time. One day, one particular large group of hikers appears. One of them notices me. It picks me up. I am brought back along the trail to a place I have never been before. There are lots of big gigantic metallic looking things, and some of them pull away and move. The person that found me walks over to one of these. So do some of the hikers it is with.

The thing starts moving. After a while it stops. It waits a few minutes. It starts again. After that it stops again except it doesn’t move. The door next to me opens. The person that found me walks out. It takes me into a strange, gigantic room and puts me in a jar. There is nothing to do in the jar. I try to escape but the walls are smooth and they are also clear.

Soon the person that found me returns with some forest bedding. It gives it to me. I find a particularly crunchy piece of forest matter and start working on it. In a few minutes, I am taken out of my jar and put in a new gigantic jar. This one has things to do in it. It’s a whole playground. It’s also got forest matter. I crunch on the forest matter.

A couple of days later I get back into one of those strange metallic things. I go to another strange place. [Editor’s note: She went to be shared at our homeschool program.] I have been there for a couple of hours when the top opens. Someone sticks their finger into it. On their finger is a grain. It looks like some of the wild grains that I used to eat when I was at Pogonip. I eat half of it before it is taken back out. I had already finished eating as much as my little teeny tiny tummy could hold, so I wasn’t very mad. Soon I get back into the first strange room. I had taken one of those metallic things again.

Soon I’ve been fed more of that strange, yummy grain. I eat most of it. About a week passed. I was taken out of my playground and put in a container again. Another different container, I’ve never seen this one before.

I try to get out like I did the first time I was put in that jar. It takes about a minute. Then I’m taken out and put back into my nice, cozy playground. They’ve taken out the forest matter. Maybe they’ve realized I’m not a foresty bug. I’ll eat the forest matter but that’s just because I had nothing else to eat. Now, it’s only got oats. They look like the wild oats I used to eat.

I go and play on the seesaw. I go and hang out there a few minutes.

That is the end of my story. That’s where I am right now.