“The other day someone came in with a picture of a cockroach that he got out of his ear.”
Jody Green keeps an ongoing list of the 50 Weirdest Cases she has encountered while serving as an urban entomologist at Nebraska Extension.
One would think that a wooden cockroach flying into a person’s ear canal – an accidental detour en route to the glowing temptation radiating near the man’s head – would be a head-turner for this list. But like the winged, six-legged animal, you’d be wrong.
Working for an expansion office that covers Douglas and Sarpy Counties, Green is an insect and arachnid expert for more than 750,000 Nebraskans. This means that the extension teacher sees “a lot of strange things.”
And because summer is the busiest season for many insects, it is by far the busiest for Green too. It has come to a point, she said, that she actively tries to say “no” at least twice a week just to avoid being overrun.
“It’s crazy in the summer,” said Green, who works out of Omaha. “I’m just waiting for winter. It’s not that I won’t be busy then, but I’ll make up for it because all bugs are dead or dormant or hibernate. You are preparing to annoy people in the spring. But in summer there is simply total chaos. “
Approximately 80% of Green’s time is devoted to pests, real or perceived. Bed bugs, fleas and chiggers, including biting insects. Wood destroyers such as termites, carpenter ants and wood-boring beetles. Mosquitoes, ticks and other potential carriers of disease. Bees, wasps and similar stinging insects. The so-called fall invaders: ladybugs, box elbow bugs, stray flies. The emerald ash borer, Japanese beetle, and other invasive species.
And more. So many more.
“My specialty,” said Green, “is simply adaptable.”
A couple of weeks ago, a couple from Lincoln – technically outside their jurisdiction – made the hour-long drive onto I-80 and walked into the extension office with a glue trap in hand. Brown recluse spiders, a large number of which had settled in the couple’s apartment, hung from the trap.
Green went into therapist mode, listening to the couple’s questions and concerns, offering comforting words and gentle explanations: people can have hundreds of them and not be bitten. These are the precautions to take. I understand why you don’t want to live there, and I think the landlord should do more.
Then she put on her detective hat and asked herself and the couple a series of questions: Why are the spiders there? Someone probably unknowingly imported them during a move-in. What do you want? Food and buddies of course. Which insects could the spiders feed on? How many units are there in the apartment? Have neighbors also reported the brown hermits?
“For me, it’s really about being the Sherlock Holmes of vermin,” she said. “I want to meet you. I want to think like you. I want to be able to keep them out, keep them out, but understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. “
She also wants, whenever possible, to avoid the over-reliance on insecticides that can arise when homeowners or renters – sometimes faced with a phobia – take matters into their own hands or turn to a pest control company unnecessarily.
“The couple said, ‘They have sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and it doesn’t get any better,'” said Green, who was an exterminator herself. “This is not going to work. In this case (the problem) can go through walls. It is really difficult to treat spiders with insecticides because of their biology. You can cross a room without touching a treated surface. “
Fortunately, landlords are required to provide a pest-free environment for their tenants. So Green put the couple in touch with a Lancaster County Health Inspector whom she knew from a previous job in the Enlargement.
“If I don’t know the answer, I’ll say I don’t, but I’ll help you find the resources you need,” she said. “If I were in jail, I would be the person with all the cigarettes. I may not have it, but I can get it for you. “
As busy as she is with walk-ins and email, Green also spends a lot of time getting into the community and educating all sorts of people about all sorts of creatures. She’s spoken to nurses and real estate professionals about bed bugs – if Green were ever to focus on just one insect, it would be them. In June, she teamed up with 4-H for the Nature Night Walk, a four-hour excursion through Schramm State Park that Green’s daughter canceled an overnight stay just to be part of it.
“Often,” said Green, “parents think, ‘This is really fun.’ I think it’s an entomology thing: if you get involved, you feel like a kid all the time. “
In August, she was invited to speak to the garden clubs Bellevue and Papillion, who held a potluck dinner alongside their talk on solitary bees. A few days later, Green received a watercolor painting on the subject of bees by one of the participants.
“Just knowing that there are people who want to sit down and have dinner while I talk about bugs? It’s amazing, ”she said.
Since bugs are bugs, much of the educational component can focus on dispelling myths, including Greens # 1: that all insects are bad and want to harm people. And much of that distraction, she said, begins with listening and understanding why a particular person believes the way they do. Often times it stems from a bad experience or misinformation picked up at a formative age.
“You also have to watch what is going on in the media because people see something on the news or read something or there is a show or a movie,” she said. “And it reminds them that, you know, they have ants in their brains or whatever. You have to be on it. “
It helps, if she has learned, to produce these media herself or to appear in them. That summer, Green hosted several episodes of Arthro-Pod, a long-running podcast created by a colleague. She wrote a blog entry for Entomology Today. Her Twitter account @JodyBugsMeUNL pays homage to the wonders of arthropods: photos of a wolf spider hauling its egg sac, time-lapse video of a monarch butterfly entering and emerging from its cocoon, video and photos of a steel-blue cricket wasp that lives up to its name.
Have you seen the osmeterium of a swallowtail caterpillar? Did you smell the osmeterium of a swallowtail caterpillar? pic.twitter.com/fm2InnDlfB
– Jody Green (@JodyBugsMeUNL) August 3, 2021
She has also just completed her final season of appearances on the show “Backyard Farmer,” which will air on local PBS and NPR networks from April through September. As part of a rotating panel of experts, Green comes in for short sections or in-depth glimpses of the insects she knows best. In a recent episode, she had a monarch caterpillar eating from her hand. A swallowtail caterpillar, ready for its close-up, pooped on the same hand as the camera zoomed in.
“I like to impress and I like to bring live things,” she said. “Of course I like to show things in their beauty, as people could see them in their garden.”
What if she feels overwhelmed by the summer frenzy? Green says she finds refuge in the tranquility of her own garden and in the company of a few well-known friends.
“In the mornings and at the weekend I get my coffee, go around the garden and look at the bugs,” she said. “I don’t look at other people’s bugs; I look to my own mistakes. I only see what is different, what is new, what has changed. I don’t know – I love it. It is likely like people fishing or sitting in a deer stall all day. It’s actually the most relaxed I’ve probably ever had.
“Whenever my family asks, ‘Where is mom?’ They always say, ‘Oh, she’s just out there with her people again.’ “
