Creepy, crawly critters catch attention

ELKHART — Soren Potuck, an 8-year-old Goshen native, enjoys the outdoors and doing anything bug-related, so the Elkhart County Parks’ annual Bug Night is the perfect event for him.

Bug Night is a two-hour insect-themed event that features different stations highlighting different types of bugs. Potuck particularly enjoyed the water bug station.

“He’s just having a blast, learning more and exploring,” Michael Potuck, Soren’s father, said. “It’s fun to be able to hit all the different stations and tables and learn from experts and also be right in nature and be able to explore all the stuff that they’re teaching about.”

Bug Night has been an event for nearly a decade, and it has grown each year. Despite the chilly fall weather, many people came out to this year’s event. The event usually draws between 200 to 250 people with good weather and media attention.

“As a naturalist, that’s kind of my passion is to bring safe opportunities and non-stressful opportunities for people to learn about things that might stress them out,” said Krista Daniels, interpretive naturalist for Elkhart County Parks department. “And insects are definitely one of those categories.”

Daniels got the idea for the Bug Night when she went about a bug event in southern Indiana. She wanted to do a similar event in Elkhart County.

Ox Bow Park held the first Bug Night nearly a decade ago. Since then, the event has been held at Cobus Creek County Park.

“This space was just more conducive to a closed-in, cozy atmosphere, and all surrounded by the prairie, so it just worked for the insects,” Daniels said. “We’ve been doing it here ever since then.”

Some of the other stations for the event included a beekeeping station, an ants station, and a bug eaters station. Volunteers ran most of the stations, except for the face-painting station, which was a vendor.

Chuck Harvuot, a Warsaw native and the volunteer running the water bug station, said he has been volunteering for Bug Night for five or six years. He enjoys talking the most about the bugs to the children who come to the event.

“I never knew about this when I was a kid,” Harvuot said. “We didn’t study it back then, so having it now and being able to share it, hopefully it will give a spark.”

The Elkhart Public Library-Cleveland Branch also brought volunteers to run a station with bug-themed books and a spider craft. The spider craft consisted of paper plates, pipe cleaners, stickers, and crayons to color them.

The Cleveland Branch has been coming to the event for the last five or six years as well. Rhonda Byler, who works with young people services at the Cleveland Branch library, said the Bug Night had a good turn out this year.

“It was such a great turn out and it was great to see all of the families,” Byler said. “We saw some familiar faces from the library, so that was nice.”

Daniels said she wanted to give a shout out to all the volunteers because without them, Bug Night would not have been possible.