Annual event celebrates insects

If you’re looking for that low-calorie snack that’s both flavorful and crunchy, you’re in luck.

Of course you’ll need to make sure it isn’t still squirming around before you take a bite.

Insect feats and six-legged eats will all be on display at the Insectival Insect Festival this month at the Oxbow Meadows Environmental Learning Center in Columbus, Ga.

Since its start in early 2000, the Insectival event has steadily garnered more interest from the community, according to Jill Carroll, administrative coordinator of Public Outreach for Columbus State University.

“Each year we try to add activities to the event that keep people interested,” said Carroll. The event is now in its ninth year.

Among the more popular activities are the cricket-spitting and cockroach races.

Several Auburn University students and professors will be working with the exhibits in this year’s Insectival Festival.

The object of the cricket-spitting contest is for the participant to spit a dried cricket the farthest distance while standing at a designated point.

The world record for cricket-spitting is just more than thirty inches, a mark set in Wisconsin in 1998, according to Carroll, who hopes to see that record broken this month.

And for serious cricket-spitters, there are some important tricks of the trade in picking up valuable inches in gaining on that world record.

“Some participants break the legs off their dried cricket to make it more aerodynamic while others get the cricket as moist in their mouths as they can so the heavier cricket body travels further,” said Carroll, who has taken part in the event — after some coercion from her colleagues.

Another well-liked Insectival event are the cockroach races where Madagascar hissing cockroaches (one of the largest cockroach species in the world) are placed in long, transparent tubes at one end while a “roach coach” cheers the insect to crawl to the other end of the tube.

Carroll hopes those in attendance at Insectival develop as strong an understanding about insects as they do an appetite for them — cheddar cheese and barbecue-flavored mealworms will be available.

“Every insect has a role to play in maintaining our environment from soil decomposition to honeybees that help pollinate one third of the world’s food supply,” Carroll said.

Several Auburn University students and professors will be working with the exhibits in this year’s Insectival Festival.

Other featured exhibits will feature honey for sale by the Chattahoochee Valley Beekeepers Association, fire ant management information crafts and insect scavenger hunts for children.

If you go

What: Oxbow Meadows Ninth Annual Insect Festival.

WHEN: Sunday, July 13, from noon to 4 p.m.

WHERE: Oxbow Meadows Environmental Learning Center, 3535 S. Lumpkin Rd., Columbus, GA 31903.

COST: $2 per person, children 3 and under free. For more information, contact 706-687-4090.