Creepy crawlers have a friend in this teen

When Cierra Olmstead was a toddler, she’d fill her red wagon with caterpillar nests. Her mother checked her pockets for creepy crawlers when she came inside.

At age 6, Cierra found a large beetle she decided to keep as a pet. She asked her mother for advice on how to care for it.

“She said it ate garbage, so I gave it a can,” Cierra said.

The beetle died.

“Six-year-olds are very literal,” her mother, Rena, said.

Now, as a 14-year-old, Cierra still has a fascination with insects. Her collection of common black beetles grows to 150 in the summertime. She keeps them in a large metal trough with dirt and rocks and feeds them apples, oranges and pears. In the winter, she sets them free after selecting a few favorites to bring inside. She houses them through spring breeding season, but it’s hard to for her to say how long each beetle lives.

“They all look the same,” Cierra said.

Occasionally, one loses a leg or has a crack in the shell that makes it distinguishable. One would think that two ducks, five chickens, a rabbit, two goats, six cats, four dogs, two birds, four hamsters, some fish, one hermit crab and one frog would be enough pets at the Olmsteads’ Spirit Lake home. Nevertheless, it saddened Cierra when her family of beetles came to an early demise one summer. Someone left the cover off of the trough. Cierra and the family arrived home to find a chicken in their midst with a beetle leg dangling from her beak.

“It was sad – like lost pets,” Cierra said.

Her sister, Devin, 12, and 9-year-old brother Dexter tried to soften the blow by turning over logs and rocks to find some more. Handfuls of beetles were stuffed into pockets and presented to their sister.

Besides her quirky hobby, Cierra is quite the normal teenager. She adores Johnny Depp and horseback riding and hopes to become a veterinarian one day. She maintains a 4.0 grade-point average and was part of the Math Counts competition in Boise last spring. Her team placed third against other local schools. She was selected as Student of the Month twice, works on the school yearbook, and is involved in Tiger Paws, an organization that helps to welcome students at Timberlake Junior High.

“I like showing new students around,” she said.

Cierra understands how it feels to be the new kid on the block. Although she was born in Montana, the family lived in Connecticut, Tennessee and southern Idaho before settling in North Idaho five years ago. During their adjustment, her father, Kyle, was away for eight months in Iraq with a military reserve unit.

Although moving meant leaving behind friends, Cierra’s love of critters seems a good match with this part of the country.

“I like all the trees,” she said. “I like the wildlife.”

If spiders set up a home in her barn, she extends friendship. The beetles emit a foul spray if others pick them up, but not if Cierra does. She thinks they learn to trust her. A 3-inch-long pine beetle, a millipede, and a cricket are some of the bugs Cierra saved and keeps pinned to a board. The praying mantis is her favorite. Her parents are accepting of her hobby but do draw the line sometimes.

“I wanted a tarantula, but mom wouldn’t let me,” Cierra said.