Focus On Insect Collecting: Have Bugs Will Travel

Growing up and living in Texas most of my life, I did not believe I could learn new things about this "big state" until last year. My wife, Ann, grew up camping with her family and my oldest son is a Boy Scout, so outdoor camping vacations have become part of our life. In my mind, I envisioned sleeping in a tent in the midst of a Texas summer as one of the most miserable experiences I could imagine, so I had limited my outings to spring and fall. But last summer, in the middle of 100-degree temperatures in Dallas, our family headed west towards Ft. Davis, Texas. And instead of a nightmare, I incredulously found cool, 60-degree temperature nights in Texas and a new awe for the land and its beauty.

The other thing I discovered — after perusing the White and Yellow Pages of Ft. Davis, Texas, and the surrounding communities — was a listing under "entomologist." This was quite a surprise and I felt compelled to call Combined Scientific Supplies and inquire about the business in this area of Texas. I discovered that the owners collected and sold insects. I was amazed and immediately intrigued. Ft. Davis, Texas, did not seem like the place for a worldwide business, but in the end, I discovered there could not be a better choice.

VISITING THE COLLECTION. After contacting Combined Scientific Supplies I received a copy of the company’s catalogue, "Insects Economic & Non-Economic…Foreign & Domestic." It was 168 pages and contained 9,000 species of insects with their gender, description and cost. On the phone, a representative of the company said their collection was in boxes and was not easily viewed like those in museums. Before our next trip to the area, I e-mailed co-owner Rod Lewallen requesting a tour of his facility and he graciously agreed to a visit. But Combined Scientific Supplies is not in town — it is a good 45-minute drive from Ft. Davis and the directions were involved, so Rod decided that meeting us in town was the best idea. (Luckily, he was just back from a collecting trip to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.) Little did we know that we were about to begin our journey to one of the most unique bug places in Texas.

After a lot of difficult driving on bumpy dirt roads, we pulled into the location of Combined Scientific Supplies. The building consisted of two railroad cars welded together in the middle. The middle rail doors make the entryway into the other cars and sliding glass doors replace the outer rail doors that allow a view of the wilderness surrounding the structure. There was a wood porch up front leading to the glass doors with a picnic table and a lot of hummingbird feeders on the trees. Rod opened the front door of the building and a whiff of acetone and paradichlorobenzene was the first thing to greet your nostrils (my wife said it reminded her of the old Entomology Hall collection rooms at Purdue). The floors had multicolored patched carpets and there were thousands of Cornell drawers on the walls of the railroad cars. Rod explained how the boxes were set up and invited us to pull out the drawers and look inside. We started browsing insects that we might never see in real life (and just might never see again in a collection). My sons were pulling out the boxes and excitedly looking at beetles; I found some walking stick boxes and showed them to my wife and kids. It was an entomological "sweet shop."

A LITTLE HISTORY. We took some pictures, went outside, talked about how Rod collected insects and how he got into this business. Rod’s brother, Greg, has a fine arts degree from Baylor University and draws entomological pictures. Rod has a business degree from the University of Texas and was a property appraiser for Callahan County until he retired. Even though they have different degrees and interests they have one thing in common — bug collecting — which they have been doing since their kindergarten days in Waco, Texas. They had collected for years and knew of a company that collected and sold bugs out of Ft. Davis. The company was founded by Terry and Diana Taylor, who had owned the company for 35 years. When the Taylors decided to sell the company about two years ago, Rod and Greg jumped at the chance. They have been happily overworked ever since.

If you are an entomologist by degree or vocation, you might envy the jobs of Rod and Greg. This entomological dream job includes contacting people all over the world for specimens and traveling the world collecting insects. However, some of the interesting stories happened right in Texas. Rod has a spot where he collects Dobsonflies every year, but he would be out of town when they emerged. So, Rod’s nephew had an opportunity to go collecting for his uncle. Since they were a highly coveted specimens and he was running out, he really needed them. He told his nephew that he would pay him $1 per specimen. The boy collected 400 in one night — not too bad for a night’s work.

Rod also described the collection process and showed us the specimen of their biggest catch in French Guyana. The genus species is Titanus giganteus, the largest beetle in the world. It can grow to 14-16 cm and commands a price of $2,400 from collectors. The beetle crawled to one of their lit white sheets at night to feed on other insects drawn to the light. They have the capacity to rip off a finger, so the catch was done with great care and expediency.

Their customer base varies from insect collectors, museums, schools and universities to pest control operators. The catalogue states, "All specimens are legally imported, permitted as necessary, and cleared by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service before offered for sale." This is important. If the laws are not followed fines or imprisonment can occur as well as stopping a process that is beneficial to the livelihood of others in the world. In the February 2002 National Geographic article on Scarabs the author states, "The biggest threat to scarabs is not insect hobbyists but loss of habitat as tropical forests are converted to farms. We believe that regulated beetle collecting by local people — and, in time beetle farming — could actually help slow this process."

After talking with Rod you learn the Lewallans are the entrepreneurs that find families to do the collecting, thereby assisting people in expanding their occupational choice beyond destroying the rain forest. The people are paid well for doing the collecting (even though they really think Rod is crazy for paying them so much money for bugs) and Rod gets specimens for his eager customers.

The visit we made to Combined Scientific Supplies was one of my children’s favorite memories from our vacation. I have noticed a renaissance of young people’s interest in insects over the years and I think we should encourage our children to be interested in this area of science because many schools seem to be going back to the basics and bugs are pretty basic.

Collecting bugs is, as you can see, a job in itself and Rod and his company are a good source for starting a collection. The company’s catalogue helps you with understanding the proper pinning of the insects and I am sure they would help you in other ways to start a collection that could be valuable to you and your business.

All photos by Ann Fincannon.

The author is a board certified entomologist, a registered sanitarian and president of A-All Pest Termite Exterminators Inc., Dallas, Texas. He can be reached via e-mail at dfincannon@pctonline.com.