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Ant Lions

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published March 25, 2019 at 11:15 AM EDT

"Doodlebug, doodlebug, your house is on fire! Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!" As a child, this rhyme was my introduction to entomology, the study of insects. My mother, a south Mississippi country girl who migrated to Louisiana, instructed me to recite the passage while poking a straw into a doodlebug hole. Of course, to enhance the chances of catching this animal, you should always spit on the end of the straw first. For a five-year-old, the educational and entertainment value of this exercise is unsurpassed.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley