TUPPER LAKE – With help from friends, Michael Keeler of Tupper Lake has amassed quite the collection of local critters.

Keeler has been preserving bugs found around Tupper Lake on a display board for nearly a decade. He has found them inside of businesses and apartments, on the roadway, at campsites and other locations in the town and village.

As a worker at The Wild Center museum and former biology student, Keeler says he is fascinated in the numerous manifestations of life on earth, from mammals to reptiles and beyond. Specially, he enjoys the complex natural designs and survival tactics found in insects and spiders, which he says are like “little living robots.”

Sometimes the bugs have crossed his path by fate, clinging to store windows late at night or landing dead on the floor after being swatted from a friend’s leg. Other times, he and friends have ventured to remote areas, spotlighted a large white sheet and collected bugs as they are attracted to its bright surface.

Keeler meticulously positions bugs on the board using toothpicks and glue, ranging from the relatively easy and large moths to small, metallic-colored wasps and fire ants.