Local Color Observations

I

Usually, the multicolored Asian lady beetles swarm my house in October. Full sun blasts my western-facing entrance (door and windows and wall), and the insects gather in huge numbers, often squeezing their way inside.

This year, they didn't. The drought, I suspected. I was relieved -- no taping around the door, no vacuuming the hordes up and flushing them (one of the very few bugs I intentionally kill).

But in the last week, we've had a bit of sun on two days (one lots, one only a little; this is the rainy season), and on each occasion I saw a couple of beetles -- here and there.

Like this one, on a University stone bench between my house and the bookstore, tiny and alone, taking in the sun as I was, on one of the only opportunities of late to do so. I know they "rest" otherwise, in crevices of bark or narrow spaces between windows and walls.

Their intermittent appearance is an odd reassurance that life goes one, even in the darkest days.

II

Abandoned bikes also appear mysteriously, and sometimes disappear. A still new Schwinn (rapidly aging) has been locked to the rack in front of the bookstore for months. I think I saw it even in summer. No one has ever claimed it. A perfectly good bike, in situ, since the owner left it there.

I can't help wondering about her, the owner (it is a woman's bike), and why she never returned. 

III

Unlike the beetles, campus bike owners often simply disappear, leaving the hardware behind.

The Universe, Big and Small

I
A few years ago, on a trip to New York, I walked the Cosmic Pathway at the Natural History Museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space. A person's stride is measured in a million years, and I stepped through time from 13.7 billion years ago when space "appeared everywhere in the universe" to "the human era . . . depicted at the end of the pathway as the thickness of a human hair."

II
Yesterday, I read "The Origin, History, Evolution & Future of the Universe" on Space.com and re-learned that the universe is "ancient and vast, and expanding out farther and faster every day." Ancient and vast. And ever expanding. The Infographic Gallery, like the Cosmic Pathway, provides humbling evidence of our insignificance in the history of the cosmos. 

III
This afternoon, cleaning a shelf, I found several Asian lady beetles, those few of the thousands who moved inside during our fall swarm. Their little bodies, some feet down and others feet up, lay rigid on the white sweep of wood I would wash. When they invaded, I fought them off, killed hundreds, taped my front door against the invaders. These corpses now fill me with . . . what? . . . empathy, perhaps.

IV

All day, I have been thinking of beetles. They far outnumber us -- in kind and numbers: 350,000 species in fact, or "22%" of all "described species." The "oldest beetle fossils" are from about "265 million years ago." Beetles are ancient compared to people, yet compared to the ancient and expanding cosmos in which we spend our lives, we are all young and insignificant.

V
Compared to the ancient and expanding cosmos in which we spend our lives, beetles and people are all young and insignificant. 

Big and small, for all a little tenderness.

The Last Hurrahs?

Low 60s today and full sun at the lake brought out the Asian lady beetles, cucumber beetles, tiny spiders, flies, one American Watersnake, many Autumn Meadowhawks, and a single Sleepy Orange butterfly (I think; my first). Tonight the temperature dips to 34 degrees (predicted) with a high of 39 tomorrow, followed by a plummet to 25 by night and a slim chance of snow.

Two years ago, I might have thought this change of weather would mean the end of my entomological adventures, but last year taught me differently: I last photographed an Autumn Meadowhawk two days before Christmas.

Fingers crossed that this isn't the last hurrah.

The Many-named Ladybird!

On my way into Guerry Hall, I stopped to admire the trunk of a maple, and there I was surprised to find Asian lady beetles scurrying into tight clumps wherever protection from cold is to be found. Of course, I thought, this is what happens in their natural habitat! (I much prefer them here than on the ceiling of my kitchen.)

Inside, I settled at a distance from others in the audience to ensure an uninterrupted view. Minton Sparks (Sewanee and Vanderbilt graduate, under her own name), a woman whose work I've long admired, performed one poem/song after another, each bringing to life a unique southern character -- the gossiping aunts pecking like chickens down by the barn, the mother who pumps gas, a woman who escapes violence, the boy who rides his dead other's guitar like a stick horse, the angry weed whacking woman who lost a son in war.

Each poem, each performance, a masterpiece of observation and compassion. Look at the oddity/otherness, she invited us, and then look again, for there in each person is our common and essential humanity. Minton Sparks invites our sympathy.

Perhaps if we huddle together to share our warmth like the lady beetles on that tree, we'd have less war, and inequality, and poverty, and judgment. Perhaps, there's something to learn from those bugs after all.

Bugged by Bugs!

Two days ago, I sealed up my front door with four-and-a-half inch wide painter's tape.

Don't believe me?

Then look:

I haven't used this door since Tuesday just after the Invasion began.

The sun brought out the Asian lady beetles in such huge numbers that even the University made a public announcement about them on the community email system. At The Lemon Fair, they swarmed in such numbers, squeezing through every nook and cranny in the 1900 wooden building, that an exterminator sprayed just this morning. It took me three and a half hours to vacuum up the thousands of tiny beetles clumped around windows and doors.

I like bugs. But I don't like massed bugs that swarm, stink, and move in for the winter. They fly into the food, the toaster, the fridge, my ears, . . . well . . . you get the picture.

Lest you think they're alone, think again: we are also enjoying a banner year for assassin bugs and stink bugs. Take this little nymph -- a fourth instar of the Chinavia hilaris -- attached to the screen door on my deck. Beautiful, isn't he?

Don't be fooled: he's a stink bug!

Jill and Ron's Garden

is filled with wildflowers, dogs (two who seem legion), cats, and bugs. Jill loves them, as does her husband Ronn. She and he have also encouraged me to photograph the flora and fauna.

Jill especially loves bugs.

For her, here's a multicolored Asian lady beetle. I should add that the bug too is one of legion. Her kind invade our houses in Tennessee, lie dormant during the winter, wake on sunny days, and move our walls (or seem to when they bunch and crawl).

They sleep, they swarm, they stink, and they surprise me in close-up.

The little bug in macro is a hairy beast!