You Can Make An Insect Zoo (1974, Hortense Roberta Roberts)

If you have an irresistible urge to hoard insects in your home, and that pencil box full of dead flies just isn't cutting it any longer, then get ready to graduate to the big leagues. Because YOU can make an insect zoo!

Calling your creepy collection of bugs housed in makeshift cardboard boxes and discarded plastic ware a "zoo" will lend your insect fetish a whiff of legitimacy. And I won't even mention the potential income in tickets sold and yearly Friends-Of-The-Insect-Zoo membership dues.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with the insect world. I find bugs fascinating when safely observed on film or through the protective glass of a sealed container. Scurrying into my bed or landing in my jelly sandwich? Not so much.

You Can Make An Insect Zoo (1974, by Hortense Roberta Roberts, photos by Francis Munger) provides instructions for several types of bug enclosures for the junior entomologist to show off his menagerie of crickets, ants, moths and butterflies (sorry adventure-seekers, giant hissing cockroaches aren't welcome at this zoo!)

The Plastic Drinking Glass Case, intended for butterflies and moths, is described as the "easiest cage to make", and they aren't kidding. It's literally a plastic cup set upside down on a paper napkin. I accidentally make this cage all the time after a few cocktails.

The Cardboard Box Cage is a little more complicated with its screen windows and clear plastic roof.

The Milk Carton Cage requires pulling a nylon stocking (ask Mom's permission!) over a cut-out milk carton. With visibility on all four sides of the enclosure, it's sure to be a popular exhibit with zoo guests.

The Wire Screen Cage looks more like a proper insect cage you might buy at the store. It's a roll of screen sandwiched between the cut-out bottoms of two plastic bottles.

The book suggests using old bleach bottles. No doubt both the insects and your customers will appreciate that fresh bleach scent.

No, the Cricket Cage is not the name of a trendy insect night club. Rather, it's an elaborate complex to house crickets that includes sleeping nooks, feeding pods, and a place to lay eggs.

It also works as Barbie's Bug Infested Studio Apartment.

The crickets from my yard don't look like the creepy ones pictured here--thank God. If I had a box full of these in my "zoo", I'd want to keep a can of Raid nearby in case I needed to, uh, close the exhibit early for a special event.

If the "zoo" concept doesn't take off, I'm thinking we rebrand as Cricket X-Treme Sports Arena.

Finally we have this Tunnel Cage, which lets you observe the tunneling action of an ant colony sandwiched between two transparent cups. I wonder what percent of ants end up accidentally glued to the cardboard base? Is there a target living-ants to glued-ants ratio with these exhibit openings?

Here's what the unglued ants look like.

You Can Make an Insect Zoo is a book I checked out once or twice from my grade school library, but I never actually built any of the cages and my "insect zoo" never happened.

Lucky bugs.

The Giant Jam Sandwich (1972, John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway)

The Giant Jam Sandwich (1972, story and illustrations by John Vernon Lord, told in rhyming verses written by Janet Borroway), has a bit of an identity problem.

It seems to think it is a whimsical fantasy, in which the townspeople of a little storybook village come together to cook up (literally!) a cute solution for a wasp problem that is menacing them from above.

But let me tell you, folks, there is nothing whimsical or cute about a skyfull of four million wasps! At least there wasn't to this gradeschooler who had a bit of anxiety about large, flying insects.

As they attack picnickers...

...and farmers...

...and other townsfolk...

...this book read as a horror story for me. I mean... just look at them! Those wasps are not cute. The Cheerio's Honeybee, these ain't!

The solution the town comes up with (the brainchild of Bap the Baker) is to bait the wasps with an enormous jam sandwich. They start by baking a huge loaf of bread and sawing off two massive slices.

While this is going on, we are constantly reminded of the threatening wasps in little background details like this...

Once the bread has been positioned, and covered in an ocean of jam delivered via dump truck, we are treated to the unappetizing sight of millions of insects swarming over the sticky repast.

The whole episode serves as an unpleasant reminder that, back in the real world, food can sometimes become contaminated by the presence of insects. Couple that with playground legends of kids who got stung inside the mouth because they accidentally took a bite of lunch that had been violated by a hijacking hymenopterous, and, well.... this book just had me squirming in my seat!

Even the "happy" ending offered little comfort since three wasps manage to escape, leaving open the possibility of a sequel, possibly involving the three wasps returning for revenge, possibly by stinging the townspeople inside the mouth. Or maybe their children. Is this story over yet?

The Giant Jam Sandwich is still in print.

Mant and Mosquito!

I previously posted about 13 Ghosts, the William Castle haunted house film in which the audience was given "ghost viewer" glasses (a variation of red/blue anaglyph 3-D glasses) to allow them to choose to either hide or reveal the on-screen ghosts.

The use of in-theater gimmicks to allow the audience to interact with what was happening on the screen was director William Castle's trademark, but he didn't have a monopoly on such ballyhoo.

Lawrence Woolsey's 1962 giant-bug film "Mant" was enhanced with gimmicky special effects, including vibrating seats, fireworks, and the in-theater appearance of the half-man/half-ant antagonist (achieved via a costumed actor).

Woolsey was a William Castle imitator who, like Castle, often appeared in the trailers for his films, to speak directly to the audience about his latest screen sensation.

For the Mant trailer, Woolsey speculates about the effects radiation might have on ants, and man.

The resulting mutation would be part man, part ant (hence, "Mant")...ALL TERROR!


Mant opens with stock footage of a nuclear explosion...

...before turning to the office of dentist Dr. Grabow (William Schallert) who is explaining to his patient Bill and Bill's wife, Carole (Cathy Moriarty) , that an ant must have bitten him while he was getting his teeth X-rayed.

How else to explain this most unusual side-effect?

In a situation reminiscent of 1958's The Fly, Bill must deal with the increasingly unbearable effects as first his head, then arms, followed by the rest of his body, slowly mutates into those of an ant.

But at least The Fly stayed the size of a man. As Mant transforms, he continues to grow at an enormous scale, until he's finally large enough to scale a skyscraper ala King Kong.

In a scene that may remind you of Castle's The Tingler, the giant ant runs loose through a movie theater... OUR movie theater... bursting right through the screen!

And then there's Mosquito!, another giant bug film, this one filmed in "Three Dimensional ProjectOVision" and featuring an in-theater gimmick as well.

Detail from the one-sheet for Mosquito!

Mosquito! even opens with the same nuclear bomb stock footage as Mant!

After the sensational opening titles have rolled, we meet Skeeter (Robert Dickman) and lady veterinarian Dr. Latimer (Suzanne Hunt), who are investigating the mysterious deaths of several sheep that have been found drained of blood and with large puncture wounds in the back of their necks.

Dr. Latimer speculates that the military's underground radiation tests may have something to do with it... but what? While driving to the army base to investigate, they hear a loud humming noise above their car...

It's a giant mosquito!

The mosquito lands on top of the car, piercing it with its giant needle before sucking the life out of poor Skeeter.

Dr. Latimer makes it to the base where Lt. Bradley (Barry Jenner) and Corky (Thom Adcox) call in the military for support.

But the mosquito isn't beaten yet...

Here's a rare photograph (circa early 1960s) of the in-theater gimmick that accompanied the exciting climax... a large mosquito prop that swooped over the audience, suspended from the theater ceiling.

Unfortunately neither Mant nor Mosquito! have ever been made available on DVD or VHS, but you can see clips of Mant in Joe Dante's fictionalized account of the Cuban Missile Crisis Matinee (1992) while scenes from Mosquito! can be seen in the slasher-film Popcorn (1991).