Molly Shore
Josh Delbarian, a fifth-grader at Bret Harte Elementary School,
was not overly excited about the insects that came to his school
Friday in the county's Vector Control District Bug Bus.
"I was 4 years old and I was eating a piece of bologna and I got
stung," Josh said, pointing to the type of culprit -- a wasp in one
of the exhibit cases.
But most of David Engel's fifth-graders, waiting their turn to go
into the Bug Bus, were engrossed as they examined the four cases of
stinging, biting and exotic insects indigenous to Southern
California.
The VECMobile, a 35-foot traveling classroom nicknamed the Bug
Bus, is the first of its kind in the nation, designed to teach
fifth-grade students about vectors -- an insect or animal that
transmits a disease-producing organism from one host to another --
and vector-borne diseases.
"Four days of the week we're at different schools within our
district," Mobile Education Unit Assistant Jennifer Wilson said.
"We can make a pretty big impact on the kids. It's a great way to
get our message out on vectors."
The interior of the vehicle, painted like a pond with reeds and
lily pads on one side and a backyard with a white picket fence on the
other side, has four learning stations.
At one station, the children watched as three types of fish --
top-, middle- and bottom-feeders-- ate the wiggling mosquito larvae
that educator Karen Walker dropped into the tank.
At another station, the fifth-graders identified the stages of the
mosquito's life cycle, beginning with the water-borne eggs to the
fully-grown vectors.
