What's not to love about bugs?

Christy Bills learned to love insects when she was 4, playing in her grandmother's back yard, in what is now West Valley City. Her grandma loved insects, too. She used to let daddy longlegs crawl on her arm. Bills didn't know any other adults who liked the feel of six little legs on their bare flesh.

Still, Bills might have grown up thinking insects were a private pleasure, critters to be watched on a summer afternoon, but only if she had time. But then, when she was in high school, her biology teacher gave her a book called "The Limits to Growth." Bills began to think of her passion as a career.

And so, today, Bills is an entomologist. She works for the Utah Museum of Natural History, and part of her job is to go into the schools and teach kids about insects. Most children already know, of course, that insects are fascinating. Children have the time and the inclination to sit and play with bugs, says Bills, which is why she loves talking to children about insects.

Recently, at the Murray School District's Kennecott Nature Center, Bills taught some fourth graders how to pin a butterfly, how to start a collection.

And then, last week, in the backyard of Zoe Richardson's Salt Lake home, Bills led some children through a different kind of entomology project. Catch and release. Catch and examine and release.

Bills came to Richardson's back yard to conduct a children's party. Richardson, a longtime patron of the museum, had gone to a fund-raiser where one of the items up for bid was a kids' bug party.

Richardson invited her granddaughters to each bring a friend to her back yard, and Bills showed up bearing a tray from the museum's insect collection.

As the little girls gathered around, Bills explained, "These insects are from all over the world . . . This is from a rain forest . . . This is from India . . . These are all different kinds of beetles; aren't they weird? See this one has a great big nose . . . That sweet little moth, that was collected in 1920 . . . See this bee? It is not a bee at all. It's a fly but it looks like a bee so that other insects will be afraid and leave it alone. . . . "

After they talked about insects for a while, Bills turned the girls loose in the back yard. They were armed with nets and a ar. They came up with a variety of specimens, some on their own, some with Bills' help. A bee. A wasp. A butterfly. A bug that was not an insect, just a bug.