Tag Archives: Biology

Just be Glad You aren’t Starring in a 1950s Sci-Fi Movie

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We are, I am told, going to have a big, I mean BEEEEEEG, year for bugs here in last year’s drought country. And by bugs, I mean insects of the pesky and biting and stinging and flitting and I-won’t-even-post-pictures-of-them (you may thank me now, John, Teri, et al.) varieties, the ones that descend on the garden and leave it as a small quivering heap of dusty tendrils that give a last shudder and fall to the ground, dead. The ones that swarm around my head and ankles in grim, itch-inducing clouds of biblical proportions and leave me wanting to explode into equally lifeless dust.

acrylic on paper

Hello, Hell . . .

First we had a dry, hot year that sent a whole lot of bug-dom into hibernatory hiding. (Along with a whole lot of humanity ’round here.) Then there was this thing that purported to be winter but, in its temperate reality, was a very mild-mannered and brief cooling-off period during which the parched local world relaxed and the bugs began to feel quite welcome to reappear mighty early: mosquitoes bit me when I should have been wearing long underwear–though thankfully, not in my long-underwear regions, which would have been just too cruel for words. The return of rain here, which now to our astonishment puts much of Texas back on the plus side of normal precipitation levels and well out of drought status, was a regular engraved invitation to come and goof off at the spa, as far as the local insect population was concerned. Suddenly, flies are humming around in a leisurely landing approach to put their nasty feet and probosces on every morsel of goodness that appears, whether it’s a deliciously pretty bit of food on the table where I do not desire their company or the addition of their delicious crunch and protein to the dish, or it’s insecti-goodness of the garbage and compost varieties. Grubs and mandible-gnashers rolled out their equivalent of the heavy equipment and got down to serious work devouring tender green things left and right. And my quick walk across a grassy area acted like a strafing run in a bomber, sending up masses of craneflies like so much blasted, spiky shrapnel.

I have a special hatred for craneflies, I’ll admit, and for bugs that eat my plants or nip at my personage. I may be truly enamored of all sorts of crawly things as intriguing subjects at least when I’m safely insulated from actual contact with them, say with them in a nice tidy case in an insectarium at the zoo, or pinned on walls as magnificently weird and wonderful specimens in their pretty shadowbox frames. But when it comes to having them looping through the air in apparently aimless cartwheels that I happen to know are really going to have them fly directly down my windpipe or into my defenseless eye-bulbs or up there to nest in my hair or to burrow into my carotid and have a suck-fest on my life’s-blood (have I read too many outlandish horror stories? You be the judge)–well, I’m just not that live-and-let-live and forgiving a character, am I.

So I am arming myself with all sorts of anti-insect remedies, or things that purport to be so, and while I’m attempting with a certain modicum of ecological sensitivity to limit them to entirely natural and inoffensive and not widely toxic treatments, I can’t make any promises when I happen to see the first wave of evil bugs zeroing in on me and mine. It’s a matter of the hunter and the hunted, kill or be bugged. My general pursuit of happiness may have to take a backseat to pursuit of feisty insect vermin. There may be a few small detonations of either disturbed craneflies rocketing out of the lawn as I stroll, or of me spraying them with some wicked-sounding oil-soap-hot-pepper-nuclear-weapon spray intended to mortify and murder them in turn. There will certainly be skirmishes of all sorts. We are at war, sirs and mesdames, and I am not going to sit back and be antennae-whipped into submission without a fierce fight. My fight instinct is slightly higher than the flight one at this moment, so be prepared for bloody messages from the front. Here’s hoping that the message of victory isn’t delivered from Bug-topia. That would just be too tragic. Run for your lives!

acrylic on paper

Yikes! Head for the hills!

We are Feline Fine, Thank You

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graphite drawingTransubstantiation

Fish-eyes ogles us, just to say

in that slippery longing way of his,

that sidelong gaping staring way,

‘I envy the cat that milady is.’

We ponder his liquid love, his fins,

and the way each turn makes him squirm and sink

in the tank (predicament for his sins?),

and we sit and groom ourself and think . . .

Can’t help but pity and love the poor

fish-eyes in turn; think biology,

its cycles, return of what’s been before,

carbon reclamation, and all that we,

with wizard knowledge, learned to admire

and along the way, to recognize

as an opportunity to acquire

matter remade thus if one only tries . . .

what we think is this: that a little fish

could become a cat, graceful, sleek and slim,

by means of becoming a dinner dish–

and on thinking that, we devour him.

Tree Hugging Hippie

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Holy Tree Trunks, Batman! It's public housing for critters!

We got the good news yesterday: we’re expecting! No, come down off the ceiling you guys, this is not a midlife-crisis pregnancy I’m talking about. I’m not having any obstetrics and ultrasounds–will gladly leave that to much better suited (and -aged) women, thankyouverymuch–and I haven’t got a pretty heifer on hand and headed for calving either, like Celi’s beautiful bossy Daisy (she is rather independent-minded, that cow).

We’re having a baby tree.

Our city has a pretty nifty organization dedicated to ecological soundness and progress, and they sponsor an annual tree giveaway, a free young sapling to any homeowner in the city. They give away hundreds a year to first-come-first-served applicants who can choose between a handful of varieties each time and hope they asked early enough to get their first choice. Last year we had just moved into our house and were delighted to be granted a five-foot redbud “stick” in a three gallon pot, a baby that as I’m looking out the window now has about three slender branches starting to give it a little less strictly vertical look, and big heart-shaped leaves fluttering in the midday breeze.

This year I’m happy to learn we get our first choice again and will become proud parents of a Mexican Plum sapling. I’m going to add it to our front yard along with the redbud, where I hope that the two modest flowering trees will grow in to eventually be mature enough to together fill the gap that will inevitably be left when the big, beautiful flowering pear out there gives up the ghost, as I’m told they tend to do in a rather moderate lifespan of 25 or 30 years (this one, given its size and the age of the house, may well have about 20 years under its bark already). Then I’ll still have blooming trees to complement the fabulous old Post Oaks in the front garden.

Can you tell we’re big fans of trees here? When you know that both my husband and I grew up in the Evergreen State, surrounded by Douglas firs and a kazillion other varieties of trees, and that we moved to a state we knew full well would have hot summers (though we couldn’t have guessed quite how relentlessly and blisteringly hot this year), you can’t be surprised to hear that we house-hunted by tree. That is, houses without sufficient trees around them were instantly crossed off our list, while even a so-so prospect as a building might get a go at least temporarily if it ‘gave great tree’. So we were over the moon at finding a nice place set among three old oaks (the one in the back is a Red Oak) and two mature flowering Bradford pears, and fronting a small ravine that is packed with a mix of wonderful trees. Not only do we get the heat-and-light filtering of these beauties, but we get a constant stream of birds and all of the other creatures to which the trees offer shelter and food and comfort.

This summer was extraordinarily stressful for the trees around here, and many, even in our mostly automated watering neighborhood, died. It’s inevitable but a heartrending sight, a rusty brown pine amid the hardier green oaks, letting its long silky needles stiffen and hang lower and lower as if in mourning for its own loss. A big magnolia and oak, standing side by side with their branches now utterly winter-bare and their bark peeling back and pulling away from the trunks that can no longer feed themselves. It’s a bitter thing, dying, for an ancient tree as well as for all of the birds and beasts and bugs that suffer for its loss. And for the people who lose just that much more fresh, filtered air, that spot of shade, that green-roofed place of peace.

So I am doubly happy when I hear we’re getting this new tree. A different kind than those I’ve known, a little adventure in seeing and growing something out of my ordinary ken. One that will show us that it’s spring with a splash of bloom as it grows up, even if the Texas weather trends forbid that we should figure out it’s spring in other ways. One that will someday set fruit fit for jam or juice, or maybe just bejeweled gifts for the birds and beasts and bugs that celebrate the finding of another tree.

I love that despite the sometimes arid and definitely less plant-diverse region here than what I used to know, my home’s embraced by such a wealth of trees. Oaks of many kinds, ornamental pears, a soapberry sapling that I hope will also rise up into a great feeding station for the birds, magnolias and mulberries and pines around the block; trees that make me think for just a moment that even a place of drought remembers its fecundity and grace give me a kind of nourishment that all the birds and beasts and bugs can take for granted but I hope that I do not. An infant human is a lovely thing, to be sure, as is a newborn calf. But for me, for now, nothing is better news than that I’ll soon have another tree to plant and someday sit beneath.

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Worth more than its weight in gold

Insect Asides

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Sitting here listening to the cicadas‘ serenade, I am reminded that one of the pleasures of having relocated to Texas is the variety of new flora, fauna and experiences I get to enjoy. I’ve long been an admirer of insects, both factual and fictional, for their wild-yet-practical construction, exquisite colors and textures, remarkable sounds and skills and most especially, for their very different-ness from us two-legs.

The series below was reverse-painted on some old windows when I was in one of my phases of such fascination.

3 painted windows

L-R: Balancing Act; Hello, Earthlings!; Let Us Prey

As we’re fortunate to have bought a house that backs on a modest greenbelt ‘ravine’ that can’t be built, I’m hopeful I’ll continue to meet new local denizens on a regular basis. So far, there have been visitations from numerous small lizards and frogs and snakes, a ‘writin’ spider’, a plethora of insects–many on a larger scale than I’ve previously known–a possum or two, raccoons that (to date) have only shown their glowing eyes as we pull into the driveway. There are birds galore, from hummingbirds to grackles, mockingbirds and killdeers and scissor-tailed flycatchers and cardinals and waxwings and-and-and . . . . The wild rabbits have made occasional appearances. Some neighbor is reputed to have been nervous about her kitty-cat and ‘turned in’ the otherwise beloved local foxes to the animal-control police, so we’ve little hope of ever enjoying them. I’ve heard tales of coyotes and wild turkeys and deer and other assorted visitors in nearby neighborhoods, but don’t know if or when they’ll visit the ravine or our yard.

The visitor I’d most like to see is one I’ve only yet heard and, once in the snow, seen footprints bearing witness to on our property: a bobcat. I’ve only seen armadillos yet in their, um, postmortem state alongside the roads, so maybe I’m a bit behindhand in converting to true Texanism, but hey, I’m working on it.