This is a pooter I made after having used a smaller one I bought from BioQuip for over a year. I initially made it for sucking up spiders, which I wanted to keep separate from my live beetles. My main interest was in having a way to remove the great variety of spiders I was finding in my arthropod-rich harvest of flotsam from a flooded catchment basin last April. I also thought I would photograph the more interesting ones. I soon discovered that I had way too many beetle species (my priority) in the flotsam to tackle spiders as well.

I began using my homemade pooter for collecting beetles, especially at my mercury vapor lights, and found that I liked it much better than the BioQuip pooter. For one thing, it had larger aperatures that let me suck up larger specimens. I made heavy use of it during my five trips in search for Py*tho strict*us on and near Mt. Washington. It was also way more comfortable to use.

The body of this pooter is a plastic spice jar and lid (chili powder in this case - it's cheap) that I bored holes in to receive some nylon fittings for vinyl tubing.