tell a story about bugs

I too have disturbed a yellow jacket nest and run crying all the way back to the house from the woods, when I was a kid. A few got inside my shirt, so they were stinging me even while I was running.

On a more positive note, the two yards next to our backyard are huge firefly gathering places during June and July, just gorgeous.

A month ago, I was taking part in an observation outing at a natural resources conservation area near my home. This spot was/is under threat by a proposed golf course expansion, so a group of us were out there trying to catalog as much natural life as we could to demonstrate the biodiversity of the area.

I do most of my insect observations directly in my neighborhood, with occasional sightings while out on trips elsewhere. In 2021, I observed over 300 species of insects, almost all of them in the few blocks from my home where I walk my dog. That's so many animals sharing such a relatively small space!

Anyway, I was hoping to find something new on this adventure. Some kind of pretty beetle or a different type of wasp or something. And I did find those things! But as I stared into the bushes, my eyes focused in on these two absolute dudes chilling out on some leaves.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/127666068

Fifth-instar nymphs of the North American Wheel Bug. The North American Wheel Bug isn't rare, per se, but I had never seen them. They are the largest terrestrial true bugs in North America (Giant Water Bugs are bigger, I guess). They pack a mean bite, whether you're a human or another insect. They're good to have in your garden for preying on pests.

It's a terrible picture and doesn't do them justice, but sitting there, they appeared to me like two young lions gazing out over the savannah. Regal and lethal and calm.

After I got home, I googled up their wikipedia page and found this quote.

"They're the lion or the eagle of your food web," Dr. Michael J. Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland, notes. "They sit on top. When you have these big, ferocious predators in your landscape, that tells me that this is a very healthy landscape, because all these other levels in your food web are intact."

Is this a story about bugs? I don't know. It feels like more of just an observation, but I guess I wanted to communicate how much I was affected by their presence.

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/216764339/original.jpeg

The spider on the bathroom ceiling was dead. It fell with the aid of a step ladder and a long ruler.

I think insects in general would be more frightening with better vision. They could be less disturbing with less territoriality. Should this apply in the future with climate change?

When I was in third grade, I went to Korea for summer vacation and my cousins caught dragonflies in nets but I

think children are no longer used to them.

"they appeared to me like two young lions gazing out over the savannah. Regal and lethal and calm."

That's the second time Ilxor has made me think of Visconti's The Leopard. It's a classic film in which Burt Lancaster is a posh Italian landowner who realises that his society is nearing its end, so he tries to ingratiate himself with the coming wave of the petty borgose. Petty borgswah. Borgwash.

I can imagine those bugs trying to do the same thing. Dressing up in suits and swinging their arms back and forth when they walk, just like a human. Learning how to eat human food without pre-digesting it. Getting married and having a job. Living in a ticky-tack house. Driving a car, with a manual gearbox. But as in The Leopard no matter how hard they try they will always be spiders.

Like in that film, Leo the Last. No matter how much Burt Lancaster tries, he will always be Marcello Mastroianni.

You know, Billie Whitelaw was really nice. Imagine how much more better she would have been if she was a spider.

update: SPIDER IN MY FUCKING HAIR AAAAAAH

and then i instinctively whapped at it, right the fuck next to my face, with the hand holding the gardening shears

by the grace of arachne i managed not to shear my face but did get the shears tangled in my hair with the spider

feels like nature is trying to tell me something, possibly about my hair

oh jeez! that's how the spiders get you. they wait til you're holding sharp blades, and then they go for the face.

i try to keep the advice "spiders are our friends!" in mind when i have a close-up encounter, but they do give me the heeby-jeebies

i feel like a have a couple bug stories. i'm gonna make some coffee and try to remember one

I have this weird, itchy mark on the inside of my left elbow that looks like the bite of a huge spider. I keep thinking it's necrotizing.

This has been a banner year for mosquito bites. I think I may have some permanent scarring on my legs.

Mosquitos were bonkers around here during the second half of the summer. Deer flies were a little over the top as well. My pet theory is that more pesky insects were able to survive last year due to the 17-year cicadas, which made easy targets and filling meals for local bird populations.

guess how many ants there are?

TWENTY QUADRILLLION

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsonstappedout/images/2/2a/Hail_Ants_in_Episode.jpg

yeah so the weather got cold again and the box elder bugs have returned and i surrender. you win, box elder bugs, come on inside. but is that enough for them, of course not, because i have offended an obscure greek god of bugs or hair or bugs-and-hair and now they buzz around while i'm doing stuff at home and land, yes, IN MY FUCKING HAIR as is tradition. and i have just given up doing anything about it. they don't sting, they don't bite, they are probably pooping on me but who the heck gives a darn, so i go about my business with a bug in my hair until it bumbles off to go be an idiot somewhere else. i can take a fucking hint, eventually! i'm meant to be the radagast of bugs. fine. cool. great. i'll start wearing a dumb little fascinator of a tiny birdhouse and put a neon sign on it that says "come on in you buggy schmucks, go ahead and make yourselves comfortable since i know you will anyway and this is just my life now" fucking bugs, fuck.

i wonder if it's possible to train these bugs? if you could coordinate with them you might become very powerful!

these bugs is ungovernable, sweet krrl. howsoever i may plead or cajole, they will not be swayed from their predetermined course of action, no matter how wild, no matter how dumb. "box elder bug, i will release you from the light fixture you have trapped yourself in but please try to stop getting stuck in there" an hour later guess who's bopping their dopey head against the light? surprise it's both the bug and me because it's too donkeybrained to stay away and i'm too squeamish to let the fool thing die in the weird bright hell inside the ceiling light. "no, box elder bug, you must stay away from the drain while the water is running!" i call out in dismay. saith the box elder bug: "i'm having an adventure whee gurgle gurgle blub blub [drowning bug sounds]"

My daughter has come a long way with her relationship to arthropods. Just a few years ago, we were hiking through the woods and came across an area that was swarming with daddy long legs (opiliones/harvestmen) and I had to give her a piggyback ride as she cowered in fright. Last week, she told me that she came to the rescue of a daddy long legs, which her friends were freaking out about at school. She picked it up and carried it over to the woods, which earned her the nickname spider-girl. Opiliones are NOT spiders, but that's nerd shit for another day.

Anyway, we were taking a hike in the woods on Sunday when she came across a yellowjacket with a broken wing. Following her caring instincts, she reached down and let it crawl onto her hand. My eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw clenched. She interacts with honeybees, bumblebees, and carpenter bees all the time, reaching down to pet them as they gather pollen from flowers. But she has never in her life been stung. I'm glad for this. My childhood fear of arthropods had been incited at a young age when I was bitten by a cute little field cricket I had picked up and it took me years to get over that. So when she reached for the yellowjacket, I was sure that this was it. "Here we go, bring on the waterworks and get ready to throw her over your shoulder to hike back up that hill," I thought. She pretty much shuts down when she even skins a knee or whatever. But it was not to be. She let the wasp crawl around on her hand for a minute and deposited it safely on a tree trunk, out of the way of crushing foot traffic. She knows that she risks being stung, and she hears me when I say that it's a pain so intense that she can't comprehend it without knowing it, but she is still be a friend to the bugs.

So when she reached for the yellowjacket

you need to rewire your child lol

naw it's cute, the world needs more entomologists

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed by her.

As a side notes, this isn't an observation of mine, but I just this moment learned that there is a moth whose common name is Psychedelic Jones

https://bugguide.net/images/cache/ERQ/H4R/ERQH4R0HSRDLYLNLLZOLKZDL7ZCLXZVLGRSH6RDLERTL7ZBLQZKHXZLHSZ2LFL6LFLELZZNLZZTLZZ2LMRJZERYZZZ2L.jpg

Here goes my kid, tempting fate again.

https://i.imgur.com/JM4Efm0.png

As we were walking out the door to the bus stop this morning, she saw this bumblebee on some flowers on our steps. It was moving slowly; temperatures were around 60°F. I suggested that she go over and pet it to warm it up. Instead, she put her finger out and it climbed right on, hugging her finger tightly. I was worried that it would still be on there when the school bus arrived, so I tried to coax it off onto a stick. It started to look a little agitated while I was doing this, but the transfer was managed successfully. Then it crawled from the stick onto my finger, and I'm much more scared of getting stung. The school bus arrived and my daughter left, leaving just me and the bee, clinging tightly to my finger. It shook its wings off and started moving up my arm. Please don't try to climb up my sleeve. It gained speed and took off, flying straight at my face before taking a hard left and buzzing off into the morning air.