God's Creatures

A conservative was here over Easter talking about Jesus Christ when a wolf spider woke from its winter's nap and went hunting in my carpet, and the guy's eyes widened and he asked when I was going to kill it. I said, "Wolf spiders are harmless. No reason to fear. They don't bite. I never kill wolf spiders; they eat cockroaches (occasionally, a roach comes up the drainpipe here) and other bugs. They're not interested in you." He kept an obsessive eye on it. I tried to put him at ease saying, "You haven't got anything it wants." He urged me to kill it. I said, "It's one of God's creatures," and that shut him up.

The month of May means other "Thingz" are coming alive in multiples as millipedes wiggle-waggle across the linoleum like they own the place. I deposit them outside, with mixed feelings, because they belong out there but might also become some songbird's meal. That's the chance you take. Outdoors, after yesterday's heavy rains, beneath the garage door and a packing of wet leaves were lots and lots of worms, a sort of urban worm center, all wiggling and alive. Worms are our friends, and alive is beautiful! To me they looked like art.

In Search of Spring

Soil at 50 degrees is the minimum for morel mushrooms. Each year about this time, every week I take the soil temp in the woods where they grow; this first time got 54 degrees. But really we can't expect them at this latitude (39N) so early in spring. If you were a morel, would you want to stand in wet 54-degree mud and stay there? Would you even poke your head out if there's still a chance that a freeze might shrivel your delicate tissues? Granted, it's very rich mud, quite satisfactory, but if I were a morel at this time of year there wouldn't be enough sun to coax me out.

So when the rain temporarily ceased, I (who am not a morel) went searching in the universe for other signs of spring, edible and not, and, dog my cats, I found some. The daffodil is not in my yard.

Plenty of brand-new Turkey Tail mushrooms and those brown Japanese wood-ears were growing on downed trees.

I and my neighbor Terri vote that spring should last all year. Yourself?

The Winter Wasp

For two days I couldn't approach this window to insulate it because this wasp woke up indoors, late in the season, and dive-bombed and whizzed, seeing the out-of-doors but unable to get there. I'd experienced this before, and waited.

The next day the wasp buzzed intermittently, petitioning the window by bumping the glass and then crawling forlornly around its edges. Still I waited.

On the fourth day it clung silently on the curtain next to the light it couldn't get to. I passed by several times, and it was motionless, probably dehydrated or weak, because when I came closer it didn't stir or attack.

Now I made my move. Swiftly I brushed the wasp from the curtain into a plastic container, snapped the lid over it, took it outside, let the wasp go. By now, though, it had exhausted most of its energy and the weather was cold for wasps and I began to wonder if I'd done the right thing.

Talk to the Animals

Aloud, to the the baby bunny I saw today: "Hello, sweet little itty-bitty baby bunny. Don't be scared of me. I'd never want to hurt you."

Aloud, to the grasshopper I just saw on the shower curtain: "You know you don't belong in here. You know what's going to happen to your ass."

Who Was Knocking?

The birdbath needed filling, and I reached to open the porch door to get the watering can and almost set my hand on this huge (five inches?) green creature, Mantis religiosa, or the "praying Mantis" ("mantis" meaning "prophet") clinging to the door and screen. This startling all-green mantis--its coattails resembling folded leaves, as artfully dressed as a geisha--is most likely non-native, a European mantis, the kind kept as a pet. I'm not kidding; it says all over the Internet that praying mantises make "marvelous" pets, I suppose if you don't step on them or suck them up in the vacuum cleaner.

In the autumn, after a summer of growing to adulthood, mantises mate, and the male of the species is puny, skinny, and brown, so I'm guessing this big bold one is an adult female and she's about to mate or has recently done so. The females perform "sexual cannibalism," a spectacle I don't care to see. This is the first time I've looked a mantis in the face. What was she doing at my door today? Did she think there might be males in the house? I left her, returned five minutes later, and she was gone. Could she have had a message for me? What was it? "Be big, green, lean, mean, and beautiful?"

My Love Life

Toads aren't often seen in broad daylight, especially just outside the gym, which is in a strip mall, so I figured this toad was looking and waiting specifically for me because he was an enchanted toad who with a kiss would turn into a handsome prince just my age, with no baggage, who shares my interests. I was game, why not, and bent down and said "Hello, little guy," and put my hand out so he could hop into it, but he hopped away, saying nothing. I tried a second time. He hopped again, toward the puddle of water in the parking lot. I pursued him with the camera. Finally he turned to me and said, "I'm a girl." She's a Bufo americanus americanus Holbrook, an Eastern American toad, found in every county in Missouri.

Oh, I said, disappointed.

That was Friday. On Saturday, clinging to the siding just outside my kitchen door making his annual appeal (often sticking to the kitchen screen door for several days), the Walking Stick appeared, trim and debonair as always, this time matching himself to the paint trim. Every year I politely refuse his proposal, telling him he's very attractive and a great guy but we are not a match.

Out This Way, Please. . .

After 11 years of seeing these crossing my flooring like they owned the place, mostly during autumn, these two- to three-inch-long semi-glossy mahogany brown creatures segmented like worms finally got looked up and identified. This is an American millipede (Narceus americanus). They never have1000 legs, although they might have 750. A giant African millipede can be kept as a pet by other people, whom I hope are strangers living very far away from me. The millipedes' legs operate elegantly, in waves, and they move so swiftly it's been hard to get a clear-ish photo; but these harmless things really belong outside in the soil dining on the decaying plant matter they enjoy and helping gardeners. If after I show them the egress they don't take the hint, I humanely pick them up (they curl into perfect little spirals) and drop them outside; indoors they quickly dehydrate. 

Butterfly: Zebra Swallowtail

Not found often, and not in all Missouri counties, my first Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus) is enjoying the Butterfly Weed (Ascelpias tuberosa) in the Divine meadow. The white wings with their pale-green undertone, and the bits of red markings above the tail, and the long, long swallow tails, positively identify it out of the lineup that includes the yellowish Tiger Swallowtail and the Pale Swallowtail. I hope you see your own divine Zebra Swallowtail soon.

Ebony Jewelwing

A stunning sight: blue/green titanium body and black velvet wings. It's not a dragonfly; it's a damselfly, Calopteryx maculata, the Ebony Jewelwing. First saw it in the jungle-like road shoulder a few days ago. Recalled a short course with a professional nature photographer, who said, about photographing wildlife, "If you've seen it there once, wait and it will come back." So this evening I took the camera, but thought this elegant insect was too amazing ever to see again. Saw it, couldn't believe my luck, eased myself down into the road shoulder, promptly slipped in the water at the bottom and fell and scared the thing off. Waited quietly about a minute, and it did come back.

How to tell dragonflies from damselflies: Dragonflies at rest extend their wings to the sides; damselflies fold them on their backs, as you see. I feel truly privileged to have spent some time on earth with this lovely creature. Its beauty and getting to share it with you is worth all the gasoline in all the commutes I have to make because I live out here, and it is worth the time the car slid off the road in the snow, and worth an uninsulated bedroom that tops out at 50 degrees in winter, and worth hornworms eating my kale and ticks and chiggers up my pant legs. I hope you understand me. There are some things money just can't buy. The Ebony Jewelwing is most often found in the Ozarks. How lucky.

End of the Cicadas

Dying by the dozens already, they banzai and smear windshields, or lie on my doorstep writhing like gangster James Cagney on the church steps in The Roaring Twenties (1939). Or the cicadas simply lie in the road and expire. Last night at the community center I heard that somebody's dog eats them. (Eeeww!) And in my own lane this morning this Three-Toed Box Turtle (Terrapine carolina triunguis) sat on the asphalt munching away, the crisp cicada wings saved for last.

The turtle is likely a male, judging by the red eyes. Generally, females box turtles have yellow eyes. Surprised to see it has a pink soft fleshy mouth like the rest of us. I hope the cicada was a memorable meal because won't taste it again for 13 years. How'd I get this photo? Bend way over; place camera, set for macro, on the asphalt upside-down except for a finger on the shutter, as close as possible. (Macro can focus at 1.8 inches.) Risk annoying the subject while he munches. Keep snapping blindly and hope to catch an image like this.

Song of the Cicadas

The band you will shortly hear is called "The 13-Year Cicadas" and these cicadas singing their #1 hit will rock your world, make yo' liver quiver and yo' knees freeze! The video, taken on the Timberstone trail, lasts 35 seconds. Be there or be square. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k-dRyQJCBw

The Return of the Walking Stick

The Walking Stick hung around yesterday, this time on the porch screen, and he put on yellow hosiery, and you really can't see it in this photo but he striped and checkered his underside so he looked like a windowscreen from inside the porch, where I'd been sitting and reading. Today, however, a good 30 degrees colder, no sign of him.

The Stick Who Loved Me

Let me put to rest all your doubts about my suitor, the Walking Stick, hangin' on my kitchen storm door trying to impress me, this time for three straight days. He's really sweet but not my type. One year he had a girlfriend, and maybe just to be spiteful he and she did you-know-what on the window screen all day. I do mean all day. Enough time for me to call people, ask them to drive over and see it. Very tantric, just joined and didn't move a muscle. But when the Walking Stick is single again, who does he call on? Not his ex, but old reliable me. I like how he automatically ASSUMES I am single and available. He does the fop thing, changing colors, and I just smile kindly, say a few admiring words, tell him the right female Walking Stick is somewhere out there waiting for him, he just has to join a church or the Beginner Aerobics class down at the community center.

Wasps in Between

These wasps were born trapped between window glass that's indoors and plastic that is stretched in a frame that serves as an outside storm window. The indoor window -- original to the Divine cabin -- is sealed shut. The outdoor window can't be reached, at least by me. I could pierce the plastic and free these anxious wasps -- not because I like them; they have ancestors and cousins who have stung me when I dint deserve it -- but because their 11 expired bodies will lie between those windows where I'll have to look at 'em.

Fall Webworms

Hated seeing two-foot-long webby bags full of little maggots, ugly as sin and getting bigger every day, hanging from the old hickory tree that shades the house. Two of their bags were within reach of the ground. Had an urge to burn them.

Tried matches. The web would not light. At last I hit on wrapping pages of newspaper around the webs and setting them on fire.

After that was done I finally looked up the fall webworm, Hyphantria cunea. They weaken all kinds of deciduous trees by skeletonizing the leaves. Turns out that burning the bags, after wrapping them in rags, is a time-honored way of getting rid of them. The bags that can't be reached from the ground can be torn open with a stick or rake so that birds may come and feed on the webworms.

How Life Gets Around

I love thinking that the tiniest corners of the world vibrate with life, whether we see it or care or not, or get a photo, or laugh, or sigh at how much this looks like a loving and familiar kiss. And in August, with summer in its highest gear, everything not only vibrates, it hums.

Wild Petunia & Friend

The poet James Russell Lowell -- "What is so rare as a day in June?" went on to write in the same celebratory poem, "There is no blade of grass too mean/to be some happy creature's palace" -- and today I found a grasshopper enthroned in a Hairy Wild Petunia (Ruellia humilis), common Ozark wildflower. Photograph taken very early this dewy morning.

Jelly-Bellied Friends Part 2

To kill slugs in your garden, put out a pan of beer. Slugs are not churchgoers, so even on Sundays they will belly up to the rim, drink, and die. Told that to a friend who remembered a steamy Sunday in 1954 when his beer-drunk uncle fell into the thorn bushes, had a heart attack, and died. I said, “Gross.” He said, No, it was the way everybody should go, doin’ what they liked.

Oak Cherry Gall Wasp

Never saw this before, thought it was a fungus, but no; these are former homes of gall wasps who specialize in setting up housekeeping on the undersides of oak leaves. Taken yesterday. Latin name Cynips quercusfolii. Say that and you've said a mouthful.

Drama on the Kitchen Floor

The occasional roach comes out of the drain here, but this morning I watched one of 'em get trapped-and-wrapped by a hungry spider, deep in a corner of the kitchen where I don't clean much. The drama went: Spider saw the roach, dropped down and stung or bit it so that the roach flipped on its back. Spider climbed on up, dropped down again and strung up the roach so it was suspended in the air, and then spun it, roping it tightly round the middle with filament. She lowered her prey to the floor after it was all tied up. The photo shows her putting on the finishing touches. The roach expired shortly afterward, and the spider had breakfast.