The Remington Nature Center’s Insect-O-Rama will feature a wide variety of insects and cuisine and education on the Zika virus. 

Shelly Cox is a naturalist with the Nature Center. Cox said the annual event on Saturday is for all ages and offers the opportunity to learn more about insects and spiders native to Missouri and their benefits. 

“We will have some ladies here with caterpillars in different stages of development,” Cox said. “We’ll have the health department here talking about some insects of concern like bed bugs and right now, of course, mosquitoes with all the Zika concern that’s going around.” 

Cox said there will also be an entomophagist, or insect chef, preparing some “insect cuisine” to sample. 

“They find insects in the field and they bring them in and they clean them, prepare them and fix them in different types of dishes,” Cox said. “So he might take, like, meal worms and put them in Rice Krispies treats. Or he might take stink bugs and sauté them in General Tso sauce and provide those. So he just fixes them in a variety of different ways and he’ll have them here for people to sample and try.” 

The Insect-O-Rama takes place from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the Remington Nature Center on Saturday. The event is included in the standard admission rates.

For more information, go to the Insect-O-Rama Facebook event page.