For I am the Lord of the Blind and Stupid.
Bugs, that is.
What is up with bugs, especially, it seems, lately?
I understand that at 60 mph on the freeway they have little time to realize they're about to get their streams crossed. But, when I'm simply standing or participating in the 100 meter mosey, how is it that their survival instinct can decide its okay to not only get close to a possibly hungry specimen of beast, but to ram into me at full speed as if to actually taunt me into swallowing them whole? I've been tagged twice in 3 nights now. And it's not nature's late-night Irish, the drunkard moth, but some big beetle/wasp/fly things. Maybe they think they're invincible or something.
I don't get it. They've survived this long, right? Been around since at least the Early Devonian. I mean, sure, they've only had wings for 325 million years, but you'd think they'd use them to avoid obstacles, wouldn't you, not just get to them faster?
On the other hand, I really love bees. Something very soothing about them. They just cruise around and do their job, but they're large enough to see and so you get to watch them do it. Ants? They're ok. What they do is very cool, but you just don't see it very well, unless you're watching NGC. You see a couple chunks of worm or something float magically across a sidewalk once in a while, but it's mostly invisible. Give me the mellow hum of the bees. Bouncing off leaves, sticking their heads in flowers, tossing pixie dust around. Just generally fun to watch.
Plus, they make honey, nature's all-purpose dressing. Good for toast, strawberries, beer, tea, chicken, wine, chips, cornbread, cereal, salads, cantaloupe, ice cream, barley, cake, pie, straight up or on the rocks. Mmmm... rock honey.
I did have one really weird episode with a bee. I was sunworshipping one lazy summer day in high school and this bee landed on my foot. I looked at him and didn't figure a bee was going to do much, just sniff around and leave, seeing as how I'm generally very low on pollen. But then I felt him shoving his head in between my pinky and second toes. As this kind of felt good,* I left him alone, but then he bit me! Started chewing a hole to China through my webbing (or whatever the connection is called between your toes).
*I find insect-traveling-on-skin to be rather therapeutic. Something about single neurons, or at least very small bundles, being stimulated.
So, I kicked him off, but he came back and did it again, this time harder (or at least, it hurt more)! I think I decided it was time to go in. Or maybe I chased him away with a second kick-off. I don't remember now.
I was very disappointed to learn that cockroaches and preying mantises are extremely closely related. I can't stand cockroaches. They're like rats in that their asses never leave the floor. Just get dragged through all the sewage, slime, etc. I know rats asses aren't technically dragged along, but if you watch them, it looks like the fur/genitals area is being dragged. I also had roaches in my house in Little Rock. I can deal with a lot of bugs in the house, but something about roaches is just way over the top. And they're fast. So you have to hit them fast, but that usually translates into hard, and they explode their goo all over the counter. Not a good thing.
The first night I was in the house I spotted one on the ceiling (!*) that reminded me of nothing but Men In Black. You know what I mean, big dude wearing an Edgar suit. He was long and had horn things growing off his ass. And seemed to move like the Bug, you know, sort of articulated, not like a normal roach, which is very stiff. Very freaky to walk up under one of those things, waiting for him to decide your face is his new town home and he's "eager to move in right away."
*Roach airborne divisions dropping on your face in the middle of the night is definitely not a soothing thought.
But mantises are tidy, neat, stand upright, wash their hands, ask kindly for the salt to be passed. Closely related to the vilest of the 6-leggers? Very, very sad.
You ever see those super fast short-body-centipede-looking things in your basement? They go like Mach 5 and have the long legs that make them look like fuzzy little caterpillars? Turns out you shouldn't kill them. They're like spiders, but more mobile. They only eat other bugs, so I felt guilty for killing a couple of them at my mom's house way back when. If they're there, they're eating something, and that's a good thing.
My roommate gets freaked out by these:
They are cave or camelback crickets. Or they're close enough to what he sees in the garage to make the point. He thinks they've been released from the University here and were an experiment gone awry. Some sort of cricket-spider-
Mike Powell hybrid. He says they can go practically across the garage in one leap. Last time I went up to my dad's "farm", we moved some beams and there was about fiddy of these that came flying out like we had discovered the Flying Cricket Wallendas secret clubhouse and they were on the lam and gonna break the roadblocks in every direction. Luckily none of them landed on me, cuz unless I know a bug is comin', I don't like getting landed on especially. Too many (as in 1) black widows tried that.
Speaking of cricket, I'm now a big fan:
Actually, those are noticeably fake. Here's the real ones:
Still a fan. Gotta love boots. I said boots. Course, I have no idea how you "drive a slower ball to cover"* or "cause a batter to edge to slip"* or "apply yourself to the mopping up"* in those things. Other than v - e - r - y - s - l - o - w - l - y. So my guess is, they're actually the polo team.
*Close-to-actual cricket match coverage words. I only substituted pronouns for actual names to protect the innocent.
So, like I said, I sit high upon my Throne of 'Shroom whilst throngs of katydids and firebrats dance at my feet. A fascinating phylum. Maybe if I send some natural disasters their way, they'll stop trying to become One with Me.
