Collections, Serendipity, and Flightless Moths

Abstract

The urge to collect has been described as an affliction that is intractable as any virus, for which there is no immunity or cure. My earliest recollections of collecting, when I was 6 or 7 years old, are of bottle caps and matchbook covers. With the advent of Pearl Harbor and WWII, I was 8, came military campaign ribbons and implements, then postage stamps, and so on. My parents, who never had any interest in collecting, I suppose assumed I would outgrow it and develop a viable career. I believe the collector urge is unrelated to genetic or environmental inheritance. At least it was for me. Oddly, however, I had no particular interest in natural history until age 13 when I was sentenced to a summer class for junior naturalists with weekly field trips, organized by Charles Harbison of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Captivated by Harbie’s infectious enthusiasm and the association with experienced bug collector students, my innate collector urge shifted. I had a morning paper route and soon discovered sphingids and tiger moths at liquor store fronts, the likes of which my butterfly collector friends had not seen. I obtained pins and a cyanide bottle from Turtox and began carrying it in a WWII canteen affixed to my bicycle seat. By the end of that summer, I was an incurable lepidopterist.