[musical intro]

Hi, it’s Sean McCammon from the Waterloo Region District School Board. If you’re like me, you like exploring around your home and your neighbourhood looking for animals or birds or bugs. Bugs can sometimes be hard to find because the lawns that we typically have around our homes and buildings are not great habitat. They often have no place to hide, there’s not enough species of plants in the lawn, and often not enough water either.

Now, you can improve the habitat for a lot of different insects, bugs, and worms just by placing things around your house or apartment building that the creepy crawlies can hide under. And I’ve just found a little out of the way corner of my yard here, and I’m just going to put down some things I found laying around: a brick, a couple of old boards, an old plastic bin, and a log here. Before I lay this stuff out, I’m just going to wet the area that I’m going to put this stuff down on, just so the bugs and worms that like a damp place to hide out can get some moisture.

[rustling sounds]

Okay, so I’ve just arranged my items here, and if you used your imagination, you can create yourself a whole bug city. But I’m just going to leave these things here for a few days and we’ll come back and see if anything has found a home.

Okay, so it’s a couple of weeks later and I’m excited to see what we’re going to find here, so I’m just going to lift up these logs and we’ll have a look at what we see.

Alright…whoa! Millipedes, sow bugs, there’s a worm there. Pretty good. Oh and look at down here, you can see millipedes, lots of millipedes. [rustling sounds] It’s a worm, oh yeah. Big worm.

Alright, so just by using some old logs and some containers we had just laying around, we’ve created a little bit of a habitat for some insects and bugs that would like to live here, but maybe can’t normally find shelter. So, if you’re looking for a fun little activity to do, you can just go outside in your yard or near where you live, put down some items on the ground, and then a little bit later, lift them up and see what’s found a home.

[musical outro]