Category: Blog

Remember this record? Well, I finally had a chance to hear it, thanks to my friend Doris, who actually owns a record player.

(Thank you, Doris!)

This track list will give you an idea how cool the recording was, but only an idea. It doesn’t tell you, for example, that the commentary accompanying the insect sounds occasionally included nifty experiments. Like the one where the sound recorder, Albro Gaul, set up an audio experiment to prove to listeners that wasps don’t fly in the dark.

Here’s how it worked …

Mr. Gaul put a wasp’s nest in a cage rigged with a microphone. At bedtime, he turned out the lights in the room and went to sleep. The wasps appeared to go to sleep, too, because the buzzing their wings make in flight settled down.

In the middle of the night, Mr. Gaul got up and turned the lights on. The hive remained quiet. So he slapped the cage until the wasps woke up. How could you tell when they were awake? Buzzing. Lots of loud and angry buzzing.

Then Mr. Gaul turned the lights out, and the buzzing stopped. Because, apparently, wasps don’t fly in the dark.

When he turned the lights on again, the loud, angry buzzing resumed.

Again, lights off: silence.

Again, lights on: buzzing.

This was by far my favorite track on the album. Although the “six-footed cadence” of a viceroy butterfly walking was pretty cool, too.

That right there is a 33 ½ rpm vinyl phonograph record called Sound of Insects. It includes tracks like “Viceroy Butterfly Walking” and “Mud-dauber Wasp in Flight.” It is by far the most incredibly perfect gift I have ever received.

I got it from the Tech Old Timers, a group of retired former students, faculty, and staff at my almer mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The Old Timers gather once a month on campus to socialize and explore new ideas through invited speakers. Yesterday, their new idea was citizen science, and their invited speaker was me.

I can’t even tell you how wonderful the morning was. It included conversations with old friends (Dean Trask! Professor Bleumel!), the making of new ones, the sharing of passions, and a reminder of just how long and deep and interesting and interested my WPI family is. At the end of the morning, the Old Timers gave me this album, and I am still—a day later—stunned at its aptness. I have no doubt that once I find a record player, the sounds captured in the album’s grooves will bring me joy; I’m a true insect geek. But it will also remind me, each and every time I play it, of the way learning transcends discipline and gender and time and age.

In fact, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’ll be bringing this record back to WPI one day. Perhaps when I’m an Old Timer myself. I’ll drag along whatever beaten up old record player I eventually find, and I will tell my new Old Timer buddies about the day, back in the spring of 2012, when I hung out with the old Old Timers. I’ll recall the connections, share again the same funny stories I heard yesterday. Maybe I’ll know a little something more about beetles by then, and I’ll tell what I know. Eventually I’ll drop a needle onto Sounds of Insects and play a few tracks. “Japanese Beetle on a Ruse,” or maybe “Cicada Warmup and Flight.”

It’s official: kids in Korea can now read The Hive Detectives in their native language …