Bugging out in Veterans Park …

By Charles Sercombe
Things got awfully buggy last week in Veterans Park.
But, in a good way.
The Hamtramck Parks Conservancy teamed up with the Wayne County Parks Nankin Mills Interpretive Center to make a presentation about bugs and the important roles they play in the planet’s ecosystems.
Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a presentation without actual creepy crawlies for the 30 or so kids who attended to handle, including one that has a fondness for … dung.
In case you were wondering, there was no dung on that bug, and the kids were offered hand wipes after handling each different bug.
Perhaps a little-known fact, as presented by Nankin Mills educator Matt Noble-Richardson: “Beetles are the most successful insect.”
According to the folks at Caltech, the famed science and engineering institute, beetles are in fact “the poster child of evolutionary success” mainly because they can adapt to so many various environments.

One beetle variety stands out because of its beautiful blue hue, and also its name: the Blue Death Feigning Beetle (Asbolus verrucosus), which is not a bug to be feared –even if the name might imply otherwise.
Instead, the name comes from a sound they make when mating, which comes across as sort of like a death rattle.
(OK, we are tempted to make a lame joke about the 1960s cultural musical phenomena The Beatles, but we are grown adults and won’t sink to the obvious.)
Besides that, the kids got to handle more bugs that were not actually insects but, instead, big fuzzy reproductions.
Also, kids were introduced to a newly created, bug-friendly garden that, at this point, while still small, will be growing in the years to come – just like how the improvements have been steady and ongoing in Veterans Park.
Posted Sept. 26, 2025