Creepy crawlers

One man's fascination for bugs turns into a collection with thousands of species now on display at the Children's Museum

Sue Vorenberg | The New Mexican

10/3/2008 - 10/4/08

When Ollie Greer was 10 years old, he realized he had a kinship of sorts with one of nature's creepiest creatures — a spider-hunting wasp.

Greer, who's always been deathly afraid of spiders, found the wasp dead in his back yard in Tiburon, Calif., where he grew up, but he didn't know what it was at first.

Like any good 10-year-old boy, though, he was determined to find out. So he picked up the carcass, took it inside and started hunting through his parents' bug encyclopedia in a quest to define the strange creature.

He found out that it was called a Hemipepsis, and when he also learned that it ate his eight-legged spider nemeses, Greer realized that some insects can indeed be your friends, he said.

"I am completely arachnophobic, instinctively, overwhelmingly, so these spider-eating wasps were definitely to my liking," Greer said, adding that he kept the bug and eventually mounted it.

Greer's love of bugs has only grown in the 32 years since he found his friend the wasp. Today, his fascination has morphed into a collection of 2,500 bugs, which are on display this month at the Santa Fe Children's Museum.

And yes, some of them are spiders.

"The biggest specimen in my collection is actually a spider," Greer said, wandering through the museum and straightening his display cases. "It's 24-and-a-quarter inches long when you measure across its legs. That's as long as my arm."

There's something especially interesting about big bugs, he added, but it's hard to say exactly what it is about them that fascinates him.

Maybe it's because his favorite bug in the collection is huge, and extinct, which makes it even cooler, Greer said.

He got that bug, a Xixuthrus, after working from age 13 to 15 mounting bug specimens at Cal State Chico for a friend and entomology professor, Dave Kistner.

Greer never got paid in that job — well, not with money, at least.

"He paid me with bugs," Greer said with a grin.

Kistner had the Xixuthrus in a drawer as sort of a gee-whiz bug for the entire time Greer worked for him. And when Greer went off to boarding school at age 16, Kistner gave it to him as a present, he said.

"I was captivated by it," Greer said, adding that today the specimen is probably worth enough money to buy a new car.

Through his work with Kistner, Greer developed an unusual style of mounting his bugs.

In the "academic setting," bugs legs are pinned beneath them, angled down or up from the body. Greer, though, likes to spread the legs out horizontally as far as they will go.

"I like the legs out that way because then you can accurately measure the armspan," Greer said.

The method gives his displays an artistic and geometric quality that is very different from what you might see in science books, said David Tesseo, executive director of the Children's Museum.

"As far as I know he's the only person in the world who spreads the antennae and legs out so much," Tesseo said.

Greer's bugs come from all over the world, but he's only personally collected the ones from New Mexico and California, which number about 500.

The rest he buys from bug dealers, who get the creatures from villagers who are licensed to collect in their home countries, which supports those economies and provides jobs, Greer said.

Collecting rare bugs in other countries is illegal, he added.

Specific bugs in Greer's displays aren't labeled, although if you ask him Greer can rattle off the scientific and common names from memory for anything he's collected.

And the lack of names is actually a good thing for the kids at the museum who have come to see the collection, Tesseo said.

"It encourages kids to notice more about the bugs themselves, and later, maybe, they can try to make their own identification," Tesseo said. "If the bugs are identified the kids are only going to see what everybody else points out."

The creepy crawly ick factor might still be there when adults or kids look at the bugs — especially the selection of cockroaches, centipedes, spiders and hornets — but the display nonetheless has been a huge hit, he added.

That fascination was evident as a group of third graders from Desert Montessori descended on the museum to check out the bugs Wednesday morning, with kids mobbing in groups in front of each display, giggling and pointing.

"They're really colorful and I like all the big ones," said Zoe Chandler, 8. "I like the butterflies and beetles the most."

She liked the display so much, she's thinking about collecting some bugs herself, she said.

Her friend, Sadie Shenandoah, who's "almost nine," agreed.

"I really like them," Sadie said. "My favorite are the green butterflies. Bugs are nice."

Seeing kids enjoy his collection is something that makes Greer very happy.

In the early 90s, Greer, who's an executive chef at the Ore House, brought his collection to a basement office at the restaurant as a place to store and share it with friends.

And in the process, many co-workers' children learned of the collection and became fascinated with it, he said.

"Since 1992 my co-workers have had 41 kids," Greer said. "They used to ask me if I'd go to their schools for show and tell."

In response to that, Greer started taking his collection to schools. He would give packed assembly halls two-hour presentations about his bugs, and the kids would be just riveted, he said.

"I loved doing that, but I got promoted at my job and I just haven't had any time for it in the past few years," Greer said.

He has lots of paper bugs and cards and other things that the kids have given him over the years to thank him, which he'd love to put on display sometime with his collection, he added.

"It's funny, the kids at the Ore House really brought out my paternal instinct, even though I'm not married yet and have no kids of my own," Greer said.

Greer decided to bring his collection to the Children's Museum as a way to continue to share it with kids, he said.

But at the end of October, it will go back to the basement of the Ore House, he added.

Greer, who's also fascinated with film, wants to focus his attention on a movie he's working on when the display at the museum is over.

But the bugs will, he hopes, eventually come back to the museum in an even bigger show. He plans in the next five years to grow his collection to a hearty 8,000 bugs, he said.

"I have one final expansion planned for this," Greer said. "It will grow to about 8,000 species and after that I won't have to collect anymore — all have all the specimens I want."

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.