A Bug's Life

Getting "buggy" in the country.

Living in the country is different from the city for many reasons, but the biggest change for me are all the animals. Groundhogs, feral cats, and bugs...oh, my! I've had fun with a few Brooklyn boys over their squeamish ways when it comes to bugs. My big, loudmouth cousin from Sheepshead Bay had to call me to remove a silverfish before his shower, for instance. Or, my boyfriend from college who couldn't sleep to the sound of cicadas chirping at night in the basement bedroom of my mothers' New City house, preferring instead the buzz and hum of cars whizzing by on his native Bay Ridge streets to sleep to.

There's more: my Bronx-born mother chafing against the pretty little birds that woke her up on summer mornings, for singing from their nested perch on "her" window air conditioning unit. A well-to-do Park Slope couple from outside the country (of the United States) never really adjusted to communal apartment living, even after I sprung for a few area rugs and a sound machine to cover up the horror of my early morning dog runs. He was a big oaf of a man who loomed behind his tiny and plainly bug-eyed wife, a duo of dysfunctional who belong in some suburban Aussie condo, but not in the city that never sleeps.

Ditto with the wacky lady next door, who was so unnerved by my bedroom air conditioner unit's sporadic summer use (usually at nighttime and after work, too) in my 4th floor walk-up, she banged on it for weeks until she finally left me a weirdly fretful note of frustration. Instead of listening to my reasoning from across the narrow alleyway through our window exchange, she condescendingly offered to buy me some freestanding floor model that's all the rage from wherever the fuck she's from, because I detected an accent not of New York. 

She'd rather "die from the heat" than live with the banal white noise of my bedroom AC, even though the top floor apartment reached in excess of 100°F, and I had to buy it for my snow dog (who would have actually died from the daytime heat), instead of accommodating a rather inane background noise; such was the insane wisdom of the deranged, frazzled-haired Euro lady next door. It was clearly my fault, all of it, everything in the universe, because I'm too poor for her tastes and she's mentally ill.

My mom has gone so far as to request a mausoleum, so that her neurotic remains will never come in contact with bugs. Same turn of the mind as my former building maintenance guy, who freaked out over oven mitts that had fallen between the cracks of his poorly fitted kitchen cabinetry, blaming me instead for these microbiotic horrors left in the wake of my economic eviction from the building; a prolonged process that was supposedly devoted to my non-payment, but was, in reality, yet another city scam about inherited rent stabilization and legally binding leases that are immoral as well as nonsensical, none of which benefited me at any of the times I write about.

And so I've developed to full effect my natural savoir faire about life, inherited through my maternal Norman Abruzzi lines; a shrug of the shoulders delivered much like my grandmother's laidback saying of "Que sera, sera." Whatever will be, will be. Just like this summer's bug migration that I accept as part of my good life here in the valley: first came the big black ants that I tried to deposit on scraps of paper outdoors, one by one, in Buddhist solidarity about the sanctity of all life, and then gave up on from the sheer volume of it. 

Next came the spider who hunted them by setting up residence under the sink in a corner of the kitchen cabinet by the floor and near the old radiator that let them in, then the fruit flies, followed by very small (and tenacious) red ants clustered in the butter drawer of the fridge, feeding on the sweet remnants of fresh salted cream butter that remains there today (before I eat it with a sandwich for my lunch today). I accept it all, as part of this beautiful life. See you soon.

Badass Dragonfly

Me and a young dragonfly, on a beautiful Spring day.

Last week I walked out of the library on a beautifully sunny, warmly seasonal day to spot one very active dragonfly flitting about the entrance. I could tell right away that it wasn't a full grown insect by the size of it, but this little guy already had moxie. I watched it fly around it for awhile before I took out my smartphone to snap a few pics, fretting that the automatic door to the library would draw it in and seal its' young fate forever, before life really began. 

Within minutes I had a lot more to worry about, because I inevitably began attracting attention, which happens every single day of my life. Often I can channel those attentions and energies into more constructive actions, but not always. 

First, some older guy passing by wanted to pick it up and move it after I pointed it out. He worried in imitation of me, upping the conversational ante a notch by saying that the youngster would immediately get crushed by a passerby. He then went one "douchebag" move further, placing his socked Birkenstock foot right next to the bug to make it fly away, supposedly making his point about its' safety by its' immobility. It hadn't moved at all in response to him, unlike the fluttery open-wing display the young bug had flashed at me when I got closer to it earlier.

But that's not all, folks. Two pale hipster chicks with matching skinny jeans, face piercings, and large tats wanted to "help" out, too! I warned one of them away by pointing out her big dog jerking about on a small leash, with the well-known fact that dogs like to chase and eat bugs. Amateurs. One of them decided to get a piece of paper from within the building for emergency bug transport, thus opening and closing the very door I was trying to keep shut once again, which I kept repeating futilely to the small crowd. 

I think she thought she was an expert on all things related to bugs by stint of the rather odd and prominently displayed tattoo on her forearm of a lady's head inside a set of spider legs. It resembled her and her friend, who looked almost the same to me, but apparently I was way wrong about that, too! Oh...that's not what I meant by "Animal Behaviorist", out-of-touch hipster. They always kinda suck.

Finally, one of my older retiree friends from yoga saved me from the gathering crowd by simply passing by. It had gotten way out of hand over this one bug, so I just walked away from the situation. 

We chatted as we walked uphill about tai chi, yoga, seasonal storms and flooding, how water always flows downhill, and realtors that take advantage of your relative ignorance by selling you a place on the cheap that floods with each passing storm because you didn't research water tables before buying the house you now own (which is really about the inanity inherent in the human condition), and then finally, I looked at her tote bag printed with Northwestern Native motifs from her cruise to Alaska, because I know about that stuff, too. She looked a bit pale and exhausted as we parted ways at the corner.

And that's called "Mid-afternoon" to me, kids. I have a feeling me and the juvenile dragonfly I left by the library are going to be just fine without a group of well-intentioned helpers. Let's just call it "instinct" for today's lesson about appropriateness.  Enjoy the weather today. It's perfection.

The Dragonfly

Hungry is the lone hunter; here sits "Brother Dragonfly".

I've always loved dragonflies. My middle brother hated them when we were kids because they're big and scary, but he's also highly allergic to bee stings, so pretty much all bugs are on his "no" list. But, I love them: their gossamer wings, their iridescent and sleekly bejeweled bodies, their swooping, precise aerobatics... I think they are so beautiful and strong. Many other cultures feel that way, too. 

The Dragonfly, up close: a study in beauty and aerodynamics.

Years ago, I was inspired to draft and draw a children's story about a dragonfly (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-isle-of-dragonfly-on-pubslush.html), using the noble, high-flying hunter as a symbol and metaphor that would also speak to an adults' poetic sensibilities. I usually see them flying and dipping high above my head, but the other afternoon, I was privileged (and very surprised) to see a young beauty perched on an old yellow house that sits high on a hill in the lower Hudson Valley. I consider it a very good sign on this year's last, warm 68° day in New York.  

So close! I hold my breath, and take another picture.

http://www.dragonfly-site.com/meaning-symbolize.html

Goodbye, Ladybug

Ladybug in doorway.

Today may indeed be the last warm day of 2014, which reminded me of a sunny day last week, when the last of this season's ladybugs seemed to come right out of the woodwork, creating a haze of flying wings when I walked across the lawn. I thought just one or two of them were on the windows outside, not knowing I'd disturb a flood of fluttering bugs that poured out in a steady stream from under the eaves, to sun themselves on the bright yellow panels of the house. 

Ladybug on window screen.

It was one of the more beautiful things I've seen in awhile, and instead of trying to catch it on video or with a photo, I just stood there briefly before running my errands, enjoying the sight of them flying around, flitting here and there on the outside of the house. It was a magical moment that wouldn't have translated onto media anyway, because of their small size, nor would I have captured exactly how it made me feel: light, happy, and free, in the span of a very quick moment, like a ladybug's life lived in just two or three short years. Live free, then die. Not a bad way to go.

The Praying Mantis

Shit, dude! I open the door to an extremely large Praying Mantis that scuttles towards me and a yellow grocery bag very quickly.

Years ago after college, I set up camp at an aunt's old apartment way out in Kensington, a still unfashionable Brooklyn neighborhood that remains resistant to gentrification and most types of hipsters, barring the toughie who likes to visit authentically scary, rundown Irish bars with actual Cirrhosis-nose victims. You know, those telltale purple and red broken blood vessels of the nose that come to all who spend the bulk of their days sodden and drunk on a bar stool. To give myself a break from the grind, I'd hooked up with a state school friend and her Roosevelt Island crew; a wealthy set of upper middle class kids who still smoked pot and drank mostly unmolested, because their hippie parents smoked with them, either in their upper west side apartments, or in their posh "rustic" cabins in upstate New York. 

That thing is, like, horror-movie huge.

Naturally, they were clustered around "tighty whitey" affluent Woodstock, and I felt uncomfortable in both locales, because unlike these boarding school kids, I was (and am) a product of actual working class roots, which is not so cool when you want to light up with your parents in their impeccably decorated country homes with an Acadian who doesn't play around with that mess. It was horribly awkward and the whole situation eventually blew up like I knew it would, with broken loyalties and intermittent friendships that lasted between high school and college, over divided lovers and who slept with who and when and such, the usual typically boring hippie shit, but in the meantime, summer was warm and fine in these rich kids parents' apartments around the city. 

Damn, dude. What crevice did you crawl out of?!

On one day, me and a bunch of these kids lit up on the terrace during an absolutely gorgeous summer NYC afternoon, enjoying the cool high floor breezes over glasses from a fully flowing batch of Margaritas that stood on the outdoor cafe table in a beautiful glass pitcher. The parents were gone, and harmony ruled the day. Surprisingly for such a high apartment, this kids' parents also had a stunning garden of plants and flowers, which we enjoyed greatly, watching the lazy, fat bees circle above them, surprised that they could make the journey to the 80th floor, or however fucking high we were. It was awesome! 

Great. Now it's scaling the front of the house, to attack from above.

And then, just like that, the vibe changed, when this ginormous fucking preying mantis landed on the edge of a planter, grabbed a bee as quick as a gunshot, ripped its' fucking head off, and then sucked the goo out of its' neck, like we sucked drinks from a straw. What was even weirder, is in that exact space of 60 seconds, each and every one of our group all saw it at the exact same time, as we screamed our heads off, like we just watched a 60s horror flick for the first time, high and drunk and getting more so by the minute. It was glorious, it was summer, we were 20-somethings in the city, and life was good. That was what I thought about later, after the initial shock of seeing a huge preying mantis scuttle at me on the old porch of a big farmhouse in the Hudson Valley on a warm day wore off. It was that good.

For scale: note size of house number in relation to "It".

Brood Cicadia: Back Again in 2014

No way! What an incredible specimen.

Last year, a certain type of cicadia that only breeds every 17 years or so (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/nature-brood-ii.html), emerged from their dormant state to spectacular profusion, and they are enormous. This lovely specimen (pictured above), was so completely fresh and intact, some of its' front legs still moved from the fluid flowing within. Yes! That's fresh, yo.

Bug specimen next to piece of wood for size comparison.

So, I did what any self-respecting, wanna-be, 21st century da Vinci would: I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took a picture of it, then wrapped that bitch up in a couple of pieces of paper torn out of a notebook I always carry, so I could look at it more closely at home later on in the day.

Last years' specimen, labeled and protected for future preservation.

It was even more beautiful up close, a phenomenally unique specimen. Keen observation out in the field is so essential to our type of scholarship, that an art student cannot enter the hallowed halls of RISD (The Rhode Island School of Design) without it. 

The Nature Lab, at the Rhode Island School of Design

We have a nature lab on campus that speaks to the core of who we are as a people out in the world: artists, designers, scientists, engineers, educators, leaders, and mentors. We are the builders, makers, doers, thinkers, and hardcore scholars that make the world go forward in such beautifully perfect harmony. Well, most of the time. 

One cannot be an intellectual without a foundation like this at their core, and I wouldn't want to even try it. I've been bringing home samples since I was a kid. It's more than some pretty picture, this is who I am. Happy hunting, collectors.

Nature: Red Berries and a Hornet's Nest

Nightshade berries and a small paper wasp's nest.

Warrior in Disguise: The Shield Bug

Holy sh#t!! What is that?! It's massive, man...

At first I thought this prime specimen was a big tick that thankfully 
died it's last days on the porch, (I had a bout with bad sickness during college because of a tick bite, but more on that some other time), because of the flatness that's typically associated with the bug. 
But it had these large wings that had settled askew and out from 
the body, with colors that just didn't add up to a regular ole tick. 

I got a piece of wood from a bamboo stalk that I had I cut down with my trusty pen knife on my key chain, during another one of my walks around town on a hot, lazy afternoon that had revealed a stand of thick, hearty bamboo grown by a homeowner to obscure their backyard from a parking lot in town, and then I did when any self-respecting country person would do: I flipped that bitch over to get a closer look at it. 

Wow! I'd never seen markings like these before, and now I know why: the shield bug feeds only on certain types of trees and wood, the kind that's preferably been cured through time and the rain of many humid summers. I hope it took out some mighty foes before dying flat on it's back, like a true warrior would want. 

To learn more, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatomoidea.