In his slowest, most mysterious voice, the Fayette County fifth-grader intoned, "Let me tell you about the time I was bitten by a black widow spider!"

He sure got my attention. I put down my pencil to listen closer. Then he added, "Just kidding! But I do have a black widow spider as a pet. Her name is Cleopatra."

The boy's name was Jay Duncan, and he continued his 4-H demonstration by telling about the biology of the black widow spider. His visuals were outstanding, and he used them just as a CEO would at an executive board
meeting. He spoke for four or five minutes and never once used a note card.

Minutes pass quickly when you are completely engrossed in something, as I was in his demonstration. In those few minutes, I learned more about the black widow than I thought there was to know.

Jay was competing in the entomology project at 4-H District Project Achievement (or DPA) which is coordinated by the University of Georgia Extension Service. I was one of two judges for the entomology project.

Entomology, if you've forgotten, is the study of insects. Biologists will tell you that a spider is not an insect.  It's an arachnid. But to most folks, if something has more than four legs (a spider has eight), it's a bug, and a bug is an insect.

So what if his black widow spider demonstration was in the entomology project? It was a darn good demonstration!

Jay was one of about 300 fifth- and sixth-grade 4-H'ers from counties in west-central Georgia competing at DPA in Douglasville. Like their counterparts around the state, these kids selected a 4-H project that interested them and prepared an illustrated talk, or demonstration, to be judged.

The judges score the demonstration based on several things, including subject knowledge, visuals and speech delivery. Jay competed against other 4-H'ers in the entomology project.

4-H'ers came from 11 counties and competed in projects such as computers, plants and soils, photography, public speaking, marine ecology, archeology, and performing arts, among about 50 others.

There is even a project in outdoor survival skills that Tina and Colby (from the "Survivor" show) could have used to help them survive in the Australian outback.

It amazes me how poised and organized most of these youngsters are. At their age, I'm not sure I could have stood up in front of an audience and delivered a speech with their same flair and confidence.

This training will come in handy as they grow older. It might help to take the terror out of college speech classes and presentations on the job. And it just might make them a better student and eventually a more competent employee.

That's why 4-H invests so many hours working with young people to prepare for their five minutes of fame at DPA. You never know---it just might last a lifetime.

Kind of like a fascination with black widow spiders. (By the way, Jay won first place in entomology.)

Mike Isbell is the Heard County Extension Coordinator with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.