Macaroni Beetles and Book Bugs

I need to write today because a lot happened, but not the way I had intended. I'm okay with things not going according to plan, although sometimes I have to bite my tongue, and sometimes I have to remember that I am not one of the children and start putting in my 2 cents worth.
This morning we started with a school journal article from back in 1994, a long time ago I know, and pretty ancient stuff for the children who weren't even born yet. We read an "article" about the macaroni forest in the middle of the North Island, which is where macaroni trees grow. The macaroni beetle comes out once a year when it hears the strands of macaroni scraping the ground because they're so long, and they eat the centres out of the strands to create tubes, cutting them off every 2.5cm for air. The macaroni dries in the sun and the people who wrote the article go in by helicopter and shovel it into bags, seal them up and sell it.
Children often believe the article, until it mentions the chocolate biscuit forest at the end. But my class today were quite fascinated with the whole idea, and only one out of the 21 children knew how to make pasta and what was in it. So after ensuring everyone understood it was all fiction (even though it was an article) I shared an April Fools Day joke that I read about online. Apparently back in 1957, the BBC broadcast a story about a superb growing season for pasta crops in some area of Switzerland. The following day they had a huge amount of people phone in asking about how they too could grow their own pasta producing tree, and so the BBC continued with the joke, telling the callers to plant a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. The children in my class though this was hilarious, especially since they now knew where pasta really comes from.
After morning tea, I asked my colleagues to meet me in the waiting room upstairs, in role as authors. I entered the room as Mildred in a state. There were moths and bugs in my hair. I was doing a great job of carrying on like I do when I think there really is a bug in my hair (I don't know why this freaks me out so much) and my colleagues eventually calmed me down, enough for me to inform them that when I went into our bookstore, bugs were everywhere! And they had eaten all of the books! And I held my hands out and showed them the remains of a few books (my hands were actually empty) and my colleagues played along and were all devastated. Until one of them reminded us that we were rich so it didn't matter about the money, and we could print more copies. So I said that I feared one or 2 had escaped! This lead to a massive discussion about the Queensland fruit fly, with images and news reports shown online. Interestingly enough, the class were quite concerned about this and I did consider investigating further. Anyway, after much time had passed, they decided to brainstorm ideas on what to do about our situation with the book bugs.

Some interesting ideas, most came up "with call the exterminator," then with more creative ideas.

This group were still coming up with solutions when everyone else had exhausted all possibilities!

Drawing is a good way to get your ideas down, better than writing sometimes!

Isn't this a most gorgeous, humane idea! Sophie decided we could capture them and put them in a box and the box could have a slot in the top and could act as a shredder, since the bugs like paper so much!

Vacuum them!

The final photo shows that this group thought we should find out more about the bugs. Since we were all too scared to go downstairs and check the bookstore, we phoned a group of entomologists.
We went out of author role, and into scientist role, and we were suddenly entomologists working in a lab. Well the children were, Mildred stayed behind and made the phone call.
I wish I'd recorded it because it was really good, and the children all bought into it. I'm not sure what Shelley thought when she came in to get one of the children for reading. I was hiding behind my desk on the floor, speaking with a panicked, high pitched voice, while Jessica took the call in the lab. I asked questions about the bugs and the rest of the scientists helped answer them. Reassured that they would send me relevant facts, information and diagrams about book bugs, and knowing they weren't poisonous, I hung up. Only for Izzy to call me back to inform me that there actually was one type of book bug that she had discovered that was poisonous. Oh dear.
She tried to calm me down by saying that I would probably be ok, and when I asked her how I'd know if I'd been poisoned, she told me that I'd get black spots on my skin.
Of course, the temptation was just too much. I'm sitting there, behind my desk, a vivid marker within easy reach...
I emerged from behind the desk with big black spots all over my cheeks.
This is where the day went totally away from my plan. I was told to call the hospital, told to call an ambulance, four lovely boys arrived going wooo ooo wooo ooo (meant to be ambulance noises) told me to get in, opened the doors and all, and drove me across the room to the hospital, which was where the hospital people were. We knew this because they answered the hospital phone. After being fake injected with a pen, fake medicated with another piece of stationery, and given glue stick to rub over my face, (which I did because I was already covered in black vivid so why not) I was pronounced cured.
The scientists spent the rest of the day drawing diagrams of their book bugs. None are complete yet but the ideas are super and draft copies include life cycles, invented names, predators, prey (besides books) and body parts that match those of real insects, with a few modifications. I'll post the photos when they are finished.