# Weird things in my room- sorry many pics to load



## smartie2000 (Mar 17, 2007)

Heather wanted this. Sorry too many photos of the odd things in my room and the butterfly wall.





The top one is _Morpho didius_ Oxapama Peru Aug 2004. The bottom one is _Morpho sulkowskyi descimokoenigi_ Peru Sept/04.




_Papilo ulysses ulysses_ Ceramis Is. Maluku Indonesia June/00




_Attacus atlas_ The top one is male and bottom one female. She's got a larger abdomen




Some painted ladies. They don't usually come into Edmonton, but we were flooded by them in 2005. (These are the only ones I preserved myself. I watched the female lay her eggs and raised them myself, inevitably they would have all died in the winter so I don't understand why they migrate up north in flocks about every 5 years)




Some more:
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0708.jpg
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0716.jpg

Fossils:




http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0740.jpg
Look at the compound eyes!




http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0725.jpg
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0719.jpg
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/fren_smartie/things/DSCN0722.jpg

Anyone else have weird things?


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## lienluu (Mar 17, 2007)

omg i wouldn't be able to sleep with all those butterflies on the wall. i am deathly afraid of butterflies. Nice collection though!


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## Heather (Mar 17, 2007)

I don't thing that's weird at all! I could totally get into butterflies. There was an art gallery in San Juan that had the most FABULOUS butterfly collages. I so wanted one. 

I know for a fact there are a few others here who are (obsessed...: ) ) with fossils. 

Love the trilobites.


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## bwester (Mar 17, 2007)

nice. I have a huge fossil collection, just nowhere to display them.


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## Eric Muehlbauer (Mar 17, 2007)

I love those pix! I remeber a weird little store I found Statensland way too many years ago....nothing but mounted insects, everywhere...the most spectacular things imaginable...and a tank of live mudskippers....everything , I think, was for sale...well, maybe not the mudskippers....And I remember collecting fossils in my college days..there was a canyon, (Kashong Glen, just south of Geneva, NY, on rt 14)..mostly corals and crinoids,but I still have a scar on my finger from breaking open the rock that had my first (and only) trilobite fossil. By the way, if you haven't read it already, 
i'd highly recommend Trilobite, by Richard Fortey, an amazingly entertaining, informative, and well written book, even for someone without any interest in trilobites....Take care, Eric


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## dave b (Mar 17, 2007)

Those were beautiful. Not weird at all. 

Weird would be having those felt posters from 80's that glowed when you turned on the black lights...still on the walls today. One of my old friends had the walls of his first apartment covered with those things...1988.


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## SlipperFan (Mar 18, 2007)

Lepidoptery wall? 2 are moths....


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## kentuckiense (Mar 18, 2007)

SlipperFan said:


> Lepidoptery wall? 2 are moths....


Moths make up the vast vast majority of Lepidoptera!


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## MoreWater (Mar 18, 2007)

wow. They are so amazing.

but this also brings back memories of the exhibit I saw at the Toronto Textile Museum. The artist used moths etc. to create "wallpaper" patterns. Literally walls full of them. Rooms full. It was rather horrifying......

Edited to add the artist's website.


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## Hien (Mar 18, 2007)

lienluu said:


> omg i wouldn't be able to sleep with all those butterflies on the wall. i am deathly afraid of butterflies. Nice collection though!



I used to have a collection of butterfly & bugs that I got from the store in SOHO called EVOLUTION
One day I read a feng shui book by Lillian Too. 
I gave away my collection the next day to peoples who do not believe in feng shui


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## Heather (Mar 19, 2007)

Ki, that's wild! I think it's cool, but I also can see how it would be a little disturbing. 

Especially for Lien! ity:


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## lienluu (Mar 19, 2007)

Lots of things to crawl into your ear in those rooms


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## Park Bear (Mar 19, 2007)

I have a few weird things I collect also.....I've always wanted to have butterflies and bugs mounted to display.


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## dave b (Mar 20, 2007)

Park Bear said:


> I have a few weird things I collect also.....I've always wanted to have butterflies and bugs mounted to display.



Im almost afraid to ask....pictures??


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## dave b (Mar 20, 2007)

Only weird thing on the walls besides the sterile-white-paint look.






Top to bottom: Indian Archery Deerslayer, Bear Grizzly, Bear Apache (my sons).
Dont hunt, just target shoot for fun and relaxation. Local range has targets out in the woods, making you walk the trails. I think there are 18 targets (holes)...redneck golf??? Shoulders give me problems, and i dont shoot much anymore. Dont golf either, not because of shoulders, just dont.


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## Park Bear (Mar 21, 2007)

dave b said:


> Im almost afraid to ask....pictures??




I don't have pictures, but I keep all of the fish that have jumped out of their tanks and committed suicide. Nice and crispy.


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## Hien (Mar 21, 2007)

dave b said:


> Only weird thing on the walls besides the sterile-white-paint look.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 Those are fascinated (Are they modern bows? I thought native americans used more primitive looking bows).


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## dave b (Mar 21, 2007)

Hien said:


> Those are fascinated (Are they modern bows? I thought native americans used more primitive looking bows).



These are modern (one from the 50-60's another from the 70-80's). They are traditional style recurve bows. No sights. Wood / fiberglass laminate.

Native Americans and other peoples around the world, used more primitive bows. Though some were more advanced than others.


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## Marty (Mar 22, 2007)

That's very nice! I collect insects myself, though not as much now. I've been on some crazy collecting trips in South & Latin America & Australia. Here I am with a morpho





That's a photo of me in French Guyana that a friend of mine has on his website. I'm holding a _Morpho rhetenor_. You can click the photo to go to his site


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## smartie2000 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nice catch there Marty!
....I thought about getting all the professional equiptment, but I just use ordinary items to catch and spread butterflies and I use the freezer, and I did that for only one summer when the painted ladies decided to raid the city! I read if you squeeze the thorax and they pop and are paralyzed but I'm scared to do that.
I live in a different house now, near the riverside where there are tons of native butterflies in their natural habitat...I might find time to go out with a net

Anyone who thinks this makes us savage, just understand how plentiful and how short lived they are. They spend most of their lives in as larvae, and many of the tropical butterflies that are 'farmed' and sold to us helps preserve their natural habitat because the butterflies cannot exist without the natural rainforests. This tropical butterfly industry cannot exist without the rainforest


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## Ron-NY (Mar 22, 2007)

not for Lien's view...I picked these up for my kids when I was in Peru. I have many collections but most are packed away









back view same butterflies, it is a double sided glass frame


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## Marty (Mar 22, 2007)

Yes, the thorax pinch is a techniqe we use all the time. You don't have to squish it b/w your fingers, all you do is pinch and release. You'll feel a little 'crunch' and it's done. Most of the time it will kill the butterfly instantly. Don't try to pinch the atlas moth though, hehe. Those we inject at the sheets with 2-propanol

btw, my friend who is a complete nut about this wants me to start a forum about insect collecting...sigh...  Insectboard ? hehe


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## lienluu (Mar 22, 2007)

More bugs to crawl into your ears.


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## Marty (Mar 22, 2007)

Here's my cabinet. I have about 6 more cabinets frozen. Some bugs are not spread properly, I had an accident and my aquarium leaked all over my old cases. I got new cases, but never re-spread the bugs.




That's my insect cabinet. Right now it serves as a stand for my tadpoles 









Friend of mine is an entomological supplier and builds these. Everything fits very snugly and drawers are on rails.




Madagascar Sunset Moths, compare them to the local luna moths in Ontario, Canada.

















This is probably the nastiest thing I cought myself. It's a tarantula hawk (pepsis wasp) Largest wasp species in the world. Initially I thought it was a mouse moving in the brush. It was hunting for large spiders to parasitize. That wasp gave me the weebee jeebies


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## Ron-NY (Mar 22, 2007)

Marty said:


> Here's my cabinet....
> 
> It was hunting for large spiders to parasitize. That wasp gave me the weebee jeebies


 Great cabinet! I would love something like that for my shell/mineral/fossil collections
There are many bugs that give me the heebie jeebies but butterflies are not one of them!! I think that wasp would have and large beetles do too


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## smartie2000 (Mar 22, 2007)

....wow! Impressive!:clap:
I have a shell collection too...those were the first things I collected


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## Ron-NY (Mar 23, 2007)

lienluu said:


> More bugs to crawl into your ears.


you would have to have very big ears :rollhappy:


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## Park Bear (Mar 23, 2007)

great looking cabinets.....I would love to have just a fraction of your collection


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## Marty (Mar 23, 2007)

not mine, but also a nice wasp. Mine might be a tad larger though.






my collection is tiny. My friend that makes the cabinets has a customer in Alabama that has several hundred of these cabinets. His private collection is insane! He orderd something like 1500 additional drawers

the thing that gives me the biggest weebie jeebies are the whip scorpions, they live in caves and tree hollows and are lightning fast

here's one: http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpaper/Nature/Horrors/TaillessWhipScorpion.jpg

my wife hates the house centipedes, this picture freaked her out: http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpaper/Nature/Horrors/HouseCentipede.jpg


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## smartie2000 (Mar 24, 2007)

wow....
Lien is gonna have a heart attack....


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## Heather (Mar 24, 2007)

I'm with your wife on the centipede. Those things totally give me the creeps! 
{{{shudder}}}


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## Marty (Mar 26, 2007)

hehe... it's always my job to catch it and flush it down the toilet. I esp like the wiggling legs once they come off


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## lienluu (Apr 7, 2007)

Marty said:


>




OMG Marty, if I ever saw one of these things in real life, I would probably go into seizures. And definitely I'd cover my ears.


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## Barbara (Apr 7, 2007)

:rollhappy: This is a really cool thread. Not for the faint hearted that's for sure.:rollhappy: Love the butterflies. I used to be terrified of spiders until I started working a riverside nursery during the dry years here. Spiders...BIG SPIDERS everywhere. You couldn't walk anywhere with out running into the webs, especially in the morning. Needless to say after having them crawling on me, I got over my fear real fast. I got a picture of a pretty (living) one in my garden. I'll try to find the picture of post, too really creep ya out.:evil:


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