This bug's for you.

And this one, too.

And that one over there!

When UC Davis employees and their offspring visited the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the recent "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work" Day, reactions ranged from awe to "wow!"

They held walking sticks (stick insects), Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tomato hornworms. Two youngsters held  tarantulas. And all checked out the butterfly and beetle specimens.

One little girl, Olivia Bingen, 4, who was there with her father, Steve Bingen of the UC Davis Department of Music, was dressed in pink and asked the Bohart scientists if they had any pink butterflies.

"She likes pink," her father said. She also likes to play the violin.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, UC Davis campus, houses a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens. It also includes a gift shop and a live “petting zoo,” comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas.

The museum, founded in 1946 by the late Richard M. Bohart and now directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is open to the public from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, except on holidays. Admission is free.

Special weekend events, free and family friendly, are held throughout the year. The next weekend event is Moth Night from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3. Blacklighting will take place just outside the museum. Inside, the attendees will visit the museum's displays and, outside, they will see what insects are attracted to the black-lighted white sheets.

Among those scheduled to host Moth Night are John "Moth Man" DeBenedictis; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon; entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the Lepitopdera (butterflies and moths) section of the Bohart; and Greg Kareofelas, Bohart associate and naturalist.