Hello, my name is Joshua. I am the Homeschool Kid.
Today, I am going to tell you about a butterfly that came back to life in my insect collection. A while back, I wrote an article about how I collect insects for my insect collection. Check out this link if you missed it!
https://steemit.com/homeschool/@thehomeschoolkid/insect-collecting
I have been collecting and killing insects for a collection that I put into our county fair. I display them in a box with foam in the bottom. I pin the insects to the foam with special pins called "insect pins". I also use the pins for labeling my insects.
After I catch the insects, I need to kill them. I do this by putting them in an "insect killing jar". There are three cotton balls soaked with nail polish remover inside the jar. I cover them with one of my mom's extra canning lids. The insect sits on the lid instead of the cotton balls so that the insect doesn't get caught or tangled in the cotton. Eventually, the insect will die from smelling the chemical in the nail polish remover.
I am still learning how long it takes to kill some insects. More than once, I have taken my insects out of the jar too early. And when I take them out too early they wake up! Sometimes I have them already pinned when they wake up! That happened to a butterfly I caught last week.
I took my butterfly out too early because I wanted to pin it that day. I thought it was dead and pinned it to my collection. But in another hour it woke up, and started to flap around. Thank goodness it couldn't fly away because the pin held it down! I hope you enjoy the video.
Stay tuned for more videos from The Homeschool Kid.
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I haven't collected insects but perhaps the nail polish remover would work better if you put the jar containing the insect somewhere warm. The heat should cause more vapour to be released from the soaked cotton balls and it should also help keep the insect's metabolism at a higher rate so that it breathes more. Nice post, btw. :)
Thanks for the advise!
typo in the title: *too early