Fallen mosquito hawk, Brave you were, Bent upon your mission To fulfill your full two-day lifespan: You hoped to mate and then to die. Today you fulfilled only the latter half of your purpose When you crash-dived into a standing bowl of water In the kitchen sink. How unforgivable of me! Had I noticed, I would have plucked you free And laid you upon my pillow for your hoped-for restoration Blow-drying your wings within a hair of toasting your fairy-like body. Instead, I processed your fragile body down the garbage disposal. In death, you join your brother mosquito hawk, Who just yesterday became entangled in my freshly washed hair. Unintentionally dismembered, His disassembled body parts circled down my shower drain. I like you guys because you are slow enough to catch. You tickle my loosely cupped hands. On a better day, I will snatch and rescue your nephews and nieces When they stray into my house, And I will remember you.
A dog lodged its head in the fence between my neighbor’s house and mine, and this is what the dog explained to me in a later interview:
I don’t know exactly what drew me down the street and around the corner to the chain-link fence. It may have been the smell of exotic garbage. I’ve got a penchant for bacon grease and a nose for medium rare New York strip steak fat trimmings. Or it could have been the scent of an opossum lumbering just behind the gate.
I can’t remember. My kind is better at sniffing out and chasing down high-curiosity sights, sounds and smells. Immediate gratification is our strong suit. We’re not known for figuring out cause and effect; our only reminders to stay on the straight and narrow come by way of a tug on the leash.
So when I dashed down this street, my nose led me to the gap at the bottom of the metal fence pole, where I dug the black dirt back just enough to fit my head through. The trouble was, with my shoulders wider than my head, I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t go backwards, either.
I was stuck in the fence long enough to work up a panic. The more I struggled, the more I drooled. The more scared I got, the more I had to pee. So I did. I was fast becoming an unsanitary disaster.
It was getting dark, and I realized that I am perfectly morsel-sized for a wandering coyote or two, so I started frantically hollering for help. My yelps eventually brought a guy dressed in lounge pants out the door of the neighboring house. Stooping down, he spied me, stuck in the fence and petrified. He closed in, and I wanted to either bite or run. Of course, I couldn’t do either. He quickly disappeared and returned with his wife, a glowing flashlight strapped to his forehead.
I was surprised to suddenly see the guy’s wife peering at me from the opposite side of the fence–from the inside the fence, the side that my head was on. With her was the woman who owned the house. I gulped. What could this mean? I peed again.
The owner reached down for my head, and I wanted to bite. I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself licking her hand instead. I was ashamed. Ugh! I was acting like a puppy!
I felt the guy with the flashlight on his head tugging at my legs. He was pulling them—trying to collapse them from under me. I fought back, straightening them with all my might. What was he trying to do?
With the woman forcing my head down and the man forcibly pulling and crumpling my legs from beneath me, the pressures were too great. I snarled, then collapsed. Someone pushed my head downward and backward, toward my body, back into the shallow ditch in the dirt that I had originally excavated. Of course! They were pushing my head back through the widest part of the hole!
Suddenly, my head let go of the fence. I jerked my legs down and propelled my body backwards. I was free! Gloriously free!
My legs started pumping on their own, carrying me away from the hole and the fence and the people. Halfway across the lawn, I paused and looked back. The man and two ladies still knelt beside the chain-link fence and post, looking back at me. For an instant, I felt that I owed something to someone. I should find some way to express my thanks.
But I knew little about gratitude. I only knew about survival. Like a fence that separates, I could not grasp the sort of emotionally-charged grateful recollections of life and living that is reserved only for humans.
My instincts took over instead. There! What was that sound? Was it a cat? An opossum? I hurtled myself down the street into the darkness and never looked back.
The Praying Mantis on the SidewalkThe Praying Mantis in the Parking Lot
Six years ago, I spotted an oddly-shaped green leaf on my sidewalk. It was a skinny leaf, as though torn from a larger piece. Scrunching down on my knees for a closer look, I realized it was no ordinary leaf. Instead, I stared into the rotating, alien-looking eyeballs of a praying mantis. His weird eyes really did rotate like the bulging eyes of a chameleon. I could track the tiny black pupils staring back at mine.
He stood directly between me and the door of my house. I wanted him to hop or jump or fly or whatever it is that he does, directly away from me.
Instead, he dared me to squish him. He wasn’t a bit afraid. Every move I made, he followed with his stare. He became a Godzilla-like monster to me. Would my wife arrive home and find me, hours from now, still locked in a sidewalk staring duel with this fearsome-looking creature?
I imagined his brain had me figured out. His calculating calmness meant to weaken me, his intentions to do me harm once I gave in to the madness of the ever-creeping fear.
Seizing upon a solution to the impasse, I grabbed a twig, and, holding it bravely at arm’s length, I poked him. Godzilla stood his ground on the sidewalk, eyes rotating toward mine, defying my efforts, as if to say, “Is that all you’ve got?”
I poked again. This time, his large front legs, the ones he seemed to be praying with, flexed open, then slowly closed. Maybe he really was in prayer–in prayer for this giant oaf of a being who was interrupting meditations that I could not perceive.
In time, he unlocked his rotating-eyeball stare. Perhaps his prayers had concluded. Perhaps he spied a tasty-looking beetle in the weeds. Perhaps he felt sorry for me and decided to let me go. Legs still held in reverence, ever so slowly and proudly, he strolled forward to the edge of the sidewalk and dropped over its edge to once again enter the bug kingdom.
I may be the only human he ever makes contact with. I wonder what impression I left behind?
Postlude
Two weeks ago, I was crossing a parking lot, when I spotted an oddly-shaped brownish-tan leaf. It was a skinny leaf, as though torn from a larger piece.
This time when I scrunched down, I recognized that I was staring into the rotating eyes of another praying mantis.
By now, I knew that a praying mantis changes color from green, in a wet environment, to brown, when it is dry.
By now, I knew that a praying mantis possesses ultrasonic hearing, much like a bat; this one had heard me coming.
By now, I knew that a praying mantis has exceptional eyesight and can see movement up to 60 feet away; her rotating eyes could see me better than I could see her.
By now, I hoped that somehow this praying mantis had placed herself in a parking lot to help me recall her long-deceased green relative, and to remind me that the seemingly most insignificant of life’s encounters should not pass unnoticed and without gratitude.
The first circle is in the upper left corner–the faint circle of human adults in conversation. Humans may exist in adult form for sixty years or more after they pass through the adolescent stage. Though they appear small in the picture, they actually play a very large role because adults are the ones who are in control. Adulthood is marked by several distinct and progressive stages of control: 1.) wishing to be in control, 2.) being in control, 3.) wishing not to be in control, and finally, 4.) wondering what should have been better controlled so things would have turned out differently.
The second circle is that of children chasing one another. This is a sort of larval stage for humans, a proving ground for what they will become as adults. It can be a beautiful stage of human development because there is room for much hope of what they will become. For the meantime, they’ll remain kids, innocent and running around the pond. Gradually, blemishes in their character may become obvious as those on their faces. But still, we will hope because that’s what childhood and adolescence demands of us. This will last until nearly 20 years goes by and adolescence has run its course, and they themselves will morph into adulthood.
The third circle is the pond in the center. Carefully-bred, brightly-colored, and highly-valued koi fish, a kind of carp, are circling just beneath the water’s surface. They’re hard to see except at feeding time, when they churn the waters as they recognize the person who feeds them–yes, koi are capable of recognizing their caretaker feeder–though otherwise they likely have very few thoughts that either the upper left adults or the fountain-chasing children would recognize. Inexplicably, koi enjoy lives that are far longer than our own. One famous scarlet koi named “Hanako” lived a documented, incredibly long lifetime that spanned from 1751 to July 7, 1977. Yet during the two and a quarter centuries of its lifetime, its brain recorded little other than the bubble, bubble of the water, the suck, suck of the water through its gills, and the plop, plop of the food above its head.
And it remembered the image of its caretaker feeders, having watched these humans grow from adolescents to adults-in-control, for generation, after generation, after generation…
We are told that one day the lion will lie down with the lamb.
War shall be no more.
The squirrel shall feed a man.
Wait a minute! That’s nuts!
Yes, as this picture clearly documents, a literal protein feast of nuts was passed from this squirrel to this eager man. Partially chewed and ready for digestion, the squirrel donated its “nut mix” downward to the grateful man.
In these dismal economic times, the human was doubtless without a job and nearing the end of his extended unemployment benefits. The generous squirrel became his benefactor in the man’s time of need.
The word on the street, however, is that the man actually “double dipped,” manipulating the animal for a free meal while also smuggling bananas from the local zoo’s ape house–and pocketing his unemployment check for financial profit and personal gain. In addition to sharing the squirrel’s nuts, our investigation also discovered alarming behavior previous exhibited by the man in question:
He twice violated a free-range alpaca’s fur-trading rights by taking a Norelco razor to her underbelly, shearing off her most prized belly fur, creating collector-quality toupees, and selling them on the black market.
He systematically used an opossum for a coin bank, depositing small change in her pouch while snitching coins from malfunctioning parking meters.
He taught parrots questionable words from “The Big Book of Slang” dictionary and then released the birds into a flock of homing pigeons aimed for the poolside lounge area of Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger’s California residence.
Since this troubling story emerged, the federal government has issued a full-scale alert to monitor the behavior of the 13.9 million unemployed Americans, searching for stockpiled partially-digested nuts, ziplock bags containing home-spun alpaca wool wiggery, drawers filled with suspicious opossum-skinned coin purses, and mini-flocks of parrots spouting ignoble epithets from their brightly-hued, yet baleful beaks.
Devoted readers will recall the recent blog posting of May 21, in which we stumbled upon a nasty-looking beetle with an even nastier name: The Devil’s Coach-Horse!
“So what became of this fearsome beast?” some may ask.
The longer I held him captive in the Folgers coffee jar, the more clear the choice became—I would need to either permanently eliminate the vermin, or perform a “catch and release,” borrowing the vernacular of seasoned sport fishermen. Should I give this horrid bug the “thumbs down” and squash its worthless little life, or should it receive the “thumbs up” reprieve and let it enter a world of unexpected freedom?
The longer I studied him through the glass, the more I started to empathize with him. Those horrible mandibles—well, what else to eat with? Without braces on our teeth, many of us would resemble the grille of a 1953 DeSoto. And the nasty-smell producing anal gland and spray—I dare say I know some folks who don’t smell quite right either, but they don’t deserve squishing. Then there’s that scary scorpion-like tail! If I were so small, and my captor so big, I suppose I would also use any scare tactic I could conjure up.
I gave him a few drops of water, perhaps to see if he would drown, maybe to make him start moving again, and to my amazement, his head immediately lowered into the shimmering droplet, like a dog lapping out of its bowl. I could almost hear him slurp. My amazement turned into guilt. I had nearly let my captive, by now nearly a pet, suffer death by dehydration.
And that turned the tide. He was no longer an object of scorn and fear. He was more like me than I wanted to admit. I would have to let him go. A senseless massacre was averted because I had come to know him as more than a discardable object. If not a friend, at least he had become my neighbor. In my world and in my mind, I had just settled my own version of Middle East hostilities.
As I tipped the jar, and he gained his footing, I envisioned myself also being released, along with the Devil’s Coach-Horse–escaping death, and not taking another moment of life for granted.
I’m no entomologist, but even if I were, this guy would freak me out. The name itself is the stuff of science fiction, as this book cover suggests. The devil’s coach-horse is a beetle one hopes does not really exist.
The troubling thing is that this thing really does exist; I collected this specimen just outside my office door.
I thought at first this was a large ant. After closer inspection, I realized for that to be true, it would have to be an ant on The Mother of All Steroids. It measured fully one inch long, with jaws that could disassemble a Tonka Toy model dump truck with a single chomp.
I gingerly tried to gather the specimen in an empty plastic jar that used to contain Folgers coffee crystals. Suddenly, my mini-monster raised its tail straight into the air, as if to strike like a scorpion. At its end gleamed two white menacing tips, looking as though they could launch some sort of secret weaponry. Its mouth opened up like a Vise-Grip pliers, ready to sink into its next meal: me.
Dropping the Folgers jar, I clawed for the wall behind me, like a child clinging to its mother’s skirt; this one-inch mystery monster had me cornered. Pulse throbbing, I grabbed the disassembled Folgers lid and jar and did what any red-blooded male would do: I prepared to tromp him, leaving nothing behind but beetle pudding, a set of giant mandibles, and a tail full of venom or puss or poisonous juice that he would have injected into a vein. I imagined my death to be slow and painful, the poison probably first paralyzing my vocal cords as a precautionary measure, so that I could not squeal for help.
Then the unexpected happened. The cold-blooded vermin dropped his tail, turned, and attempted to retreat. It was now or never, life or death. I sprang at him, Folgers lid and jar in hand, and, mercifully, in his confusion, he did not kill me. He was my prisoner.
I kept my captive overnight, wondering just what chemical or radiation exposure had created my monster beetle.
What on earth was this miniature monster all about??
The Google search began. Eventually, I found him out:
“The other popular name for this beetle is ‘cocktail’, because of its habit of raising its tail like a scorpion when it feels threatened. It cannot sting like a scorpion, but it does have another, rather bizarre defense mechanism. At the end of its abdomen are a pair of white glands which can emit a foul smell. It can also squirt a stinking brown fluid from its mouth and anus.
“The ‘devil’s coach-horse’ name came from Irish mythology where this particular beetle was considered a symbol of corruption. It was believed to have the power to kill on sight, and that it would eat sinners. When the beetle raised its tail, it was thought to be casting a curse. The foul smelling fluid emitted added to the effect.”
Mystery solved, but no more comforted, I nervously peered into his big, cold, expressionless bug-eyes. I wondered what that beetle-brain thought about the kind of creature that was staring back at him.
And still, I pondered how he yet planned to end my life.
