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Arachnophoria!By Leo BanksSTEVE PRCHAL IS Tucson's bug man, master of all that creeps and crawls. He's founder and head of the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute, which evolved over an 11-year period from a two-car garage ranch house into a nationally-known research station, laboratory, office space and classroom for scientists interested in studying desert critters. We're talking here about life forms that make us scream and run away. Prchal has always had an affinity for such creatures. As a kid, he had an extensive rattlesnake collection, and when he started work at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum at age 19, much of his time was spent looking after rattlers. He ended up working there for 16 years. "After taking care of snakes at home and doing the same at work, I needed a change," he says. "I started getting into bugs."
Prchal's done serious work at SASI. In 1991, he published a book called Butterflies of Southeastern Arizona; and last May, in conjunction with the Arizona Native Plant Society, he came out with Desert Butterfly Gardening. The Institute recently hosted the fifth Invertebrates in Captivity conference attended by people from eight countries. But he knows bugs are fun, too: "Ten years ago people curled up their faces when I talked about this. Not anymore. Insects are really catching on." We asked Prchal to make the following picks using laymen, rather than scientists, as the standard. Most popular arthropod: Butterflies. Either the Giant Swallowtail or the Gulf Fritillary. The latter has black dots on top, and silver patches underneath that reflect like a chrome bumper. Most misunderstood: Termite. They do eat people's houses, but they're very important from an ecological point of view. We'd be buried under plant material without termites. Most dangerous: Either the honey bee or the kissing bug. A bite from either one can produce anaphylactic shock in some people. Most painful bite: Bark Scorpion. Says Prchal, "If someone took a needle and stuck it in your arm and heated the needle with a flame for an hour, that's what the bite feels like." Fatal? Very rarely. Cutest: Woolly Bear Caterpillars. They're fuzzy enough to pet, but look out for those venomous spines. The Puss Moth is second. It's beige with little black booties on its feet. Best pets: Ants. "They're fun to watch because they have such incredible social behavior," says Prchal. "A colony lives up to 20 years. You can't enjoy any other insect that long." Most likely to wind up in a pair of shorts on the floor: Kissing bugs, especially in May and June. They're more commonly found outside the city, where they feed on the blood of pack rats and other rodents. Prchal, who lives near Old Tucson, says he's sometimes awakened at night by the sensation of kissing bugs feeding on him.
"If you know how to pinch them, you can pick them up and
kill them without squirting blood all over the place," he
says. "I usually leave them on the night-table, put some
hydrocortisone cream on the spot, and go back to sleep."
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While working at the Museum, he lived in the caretaker's residence
and became fascinated with the variety of arthropods he collected
(nearly a thousand species within 50 feet of the building, and
that was probably a third of what was out there). "I love
photography, too, and the more I looked at these bugs in the camera
lens, the more turned on I was by them," he says.