Bug Squad

Head to the Bodega Bay in Sonoma County and you'll see little kids building sandcastles on the beaches. But head to Bodega Head in the spring and summer, and if you're lucky, you'll see female digger beesbumble bee mimicscreating their own versions of sandcastles.

Remember Godzilla? The 1954 iconic film, Godzilla, featured what Wikipedia calls "an enormous, destructive prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation." I have a Godzilla.

Ever seen a green metallic sweat bee? The colors are exquisite. This is a female Agapostemon on a purple coneflower at UC Davis. They are called "sweat bees" because they are attracted to human perspiration. The genders are easy to distinguish. The males have a striped abdomen.

It would never happen in real life. A quail and a praying mantis together? Except when one is a decorative metal sculpture. A mantis, a carnivore, is known to eat hummingbirds (in addition to its regular diet of bees and butterflies, et al). And a quail, an omnivore, eats both plants and insects.

Is Franklin's bumble bee extinct or is it just elusive? Annual search parties conducted since 2006 have failed to locate the species. Now scientists may learn its status via DNA "fingerprints.