Skip to main content

A moth like an owl

Wonderful is not the adjective I would normally choose to describe the word moth. Put me in a room with an agitated, light-obsessed, dusty, fluttering creature of the night and I will be ducking and diving and covering my head and making distressed noises like 'EeeK!' and 'Ooh!'

I do not like them.

I dislike the way they bounce around at face height. I dislike their lack of sonar guided obstruction avoidance. I dislike their dust in my hair and on my fingers. I hate their larval holes in my jumpers.

I could come over all Dr Seuss-like at this point and say "I do not like them late at night, I do not like them round my light, I do not like them on a wall, I do not like them - not at all. I do not like them with my lunch, I do not like their bitter crunch, I do not like their hairy nose, But I like their squish 'neath stamping toes!"

But this one ...



I have to admit - helped by being outside (light-bulb-less and ceiling-less) - that it is rather wonderful. Look at what evolution did to its wings. Imagine you are a hungry garden bird and you just saw some suspiciously moth-like fluttering in a neighbouring tree. You fly over to take a closer look and ... Woah! Sheltered by some twiggy branches and some leaves, there's an owl and its staring straight at you. Time to escape, fast!

See what I mean by wonderful. An Emperor moth (and its eggs), in the garden, on Bank Holiday Monday.



Okay ... that was a week ago. Procrastinating as per.

The 'eggs' are still in situ. Littlest is waiting for the caterpillars to hatch. I'm wondering which of the nearby plants will be their dinner - the appetite to create a moth that large must be voracious. Should I be concerned? While I'm not about to destroy the eggs, I anticipate an 'I told you so' moment with myself, when confronted by the sorry sight of a shrub devoid of its leaves. And another 'I told you so moment' when the first emperor moth baby gets stuck inside the house. Hmmm ... a quick spray with something toxic? No! Absolutely not. Littlest is fascinated to see what happens and if I am honest I confess to some interest in it too. Where do you find out about moth egg gestation times? Will the caterpillars appear at night? What will they look like?

Time for Littlest to do some research.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#
Post a Comment
Read more

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b
Post a Comment
Read more

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!
Post a Comment
Read more