On March 19, 2024, I gave a talk for the Oak Openings Region Chapter of Wild Ones, which happens to be my local chapter in northwest Ohio. This was my title slide:

I’d been inspired by a talk presented for us last year by Chris Helzer of The Nature Conservancy. Chris suggested that one of the most effective ways to get people to care about protecting insects and their habitats is to tell our stories and share what we find fascinating about them. So that’s what I set out to do. Instead of drowning my audience in depressing statistics about the declining numbers of these essential critters, I would show them pretty pictures of the bugs I find in my own native garden. Here’s another slide:

My goal was to help open minds to the beauty of bugs and reduce the irrational, culturally-induced fears that most people have. I sprinkled in some of my 4th-grade-level humor and got a few laughs:

I spent some time focused on beetles, one of my favorite orders of insects (Coleoptera). You may remember some of these photos from earlier blog posts.

I also took some time to talk about wasps, and to explain that most of them are solitary and non-aggressive. These large wasps allow me to sit within a foot of the plants they’re feeding on, and they don’t show the slightest interest in bothering me as I take photos of them.

As I prepared the program, it was hard to realize how many great insects I’d have to leave out. I wanted to keep the talk to about 45 minutes. I could easily do a few more versions of this talk, adding in different groups of bugs. I talked about a few diurnal moths but left out all the nocturnal ones. This squash vine borer moth is a large one, easily mistaken for a hummingbird at first glance. And isn’t it gorgeous?!

The program consisted of 30 slides, mostly photos like these I’ve shown you here. At the end I encouraged them to tell their own stories, and I hope some of them will be inspired to join me in the growing number of insect ambassadors. Some of us ::ahem:: prefer to be known as “bug dorks.”

This was only the second time I’ve done a public program, the first one being the Zoom dragonfly program I did for Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge a few years ago. That one was done from the comfort of my kitchen, and even so, I was very nervous that evening. This program for Wild Ones was my first time standing in front of a live audience, and for the last four months I’d been dreading it. I kept thinking, “Kim, why did you have to open your mouth and volunteer to do this?” Up until the last few days before the program, I fantasized about all the excuses I could make up to get me out of it. I was anxious in both senses of the word: very eager to talk to people about bugs, but at the same time afraid of making a fool of myself.

But in the end I managed to do it and it was a big success. For the first five minutes I felt like I couldn’t breathe and had to try hard to calm down. The crazy thing, to me at least, was that people told me they didn’t even notice that. And so many people came up to me afterward and told me how much they’d enjoyed it. I’m not sure I can express how it felt to get that reaction, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. I watched people’s faces during my talk, and I saw smiles, nodding heads, and “wow” expressions, and I couldn’t have asked for a better audience. They gave me a wonderful gift that I won’t soon forget. And someone wrote this comment on our chapter’s Facebook page:

“It was my first Wild Ones event and if others are even half as entertaining then I know I’m in the right place. Thanks for the fun!”

So what lesson did I take from this experience? That my own mind is trying to sabotage me, LOL. But seriously, this shows that the only way to build confidence is to push through the fear and do the things that scare you. And the rewards are enormous when you do that. I felt like two completely different people before and after my program. I’m still floating on air as I write this a few days later.

By the way, I can’t remember if I’ve written about this here before, but my time as a board member for Wild Ones has been such a rewarding experience — I’ve learned a lot, made wonderful friends, and I feel that my work is making a tangible difference. And without Wild Ones, I doubt that I’d have discovered the joy of immersion in the world of insects right in my own garden. And that right there is worth the price of admission, my friends!