Little World, no. 2

When I took Bug down to the lake this afternoon, I noticed that city workers had mowed. Cut grass is a good thing; I can more easily see—and thus avoid—a pile of dog poop that one of my inconsiderate neighbors has neglected to pick up, and in the early mornings my shoes won't get so wet with dew. This mowing, however, will probably wipe out the last of the fleabane, a wildflower/weed that was at its height early in the spring. Yesterday, small patches were still popping out blooms, and I managed to photograph a cassius blue butterfly enjoying nectar from the flowers:


I'm sure that like the clover, fleabane has appeared every spring. This is the first year that I've noticed it, though. That's one important benefit of having a camera: I am always looking for photo opportunities, so I notice my environment a lot more. Finding a new location is also an opportunity to learn things, since I want to know what to call the flora and fauna I spy there.

When the fleabane was in full bloom, it made a thick circle around the lake. All I had to do was sit with the sun at my back to capture a wide variety of visitors who came, like this skipper butterfly:



Also snacking on the nectar were drone and hoverflies:



And bees of various breeds came to work in the "fields":



I will miss the fleabane, but the recent rains have inspired the Spanish needle to flourish, and that ugly wildflower/weed is always good for attracting all kinds of bugs.

A special note: Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. Whoo-hoo! I managed to commit to project that no one but me cares about for a whole year. I had hoped to write at least 100 posts, but I only made it to 79, 3 of which are still saved as unfinished "drafts."

Clash of the Titans

I walked down to the neighborhood lake yesterday, camera in hand. The shoreline was abuzz with dragonfly activity. I sat six or seven feet away from the dried stalk of a water plant, watching the action. I observed that even though the human housing bubble might be about to burst, dragonflies still prized certain perches and fought like yuppies competing in a bidding war over a choice piece of trendy real estate.

Initially, the perch in question was "home" for a male blue dasher. He, however, was constantly challenged by other individuals of his species for ownership of the stick. Notice the tips of the abdomens curving up, signs of male dragonfly aggression:


I know these are males because of their coloring; female blue dashers aren't blue. A perch like this one allows the male to position himself in defense of his water territory. Here he waits ... and fights off intruders ...


And waits a while longer ... and fights off more intruders ... and waits until a female ready to mate finally arrives. She will lay her eggs directly in the water—or in plants in the water [depends on the species]—so the male must have a choice spot picked out for her.


Eventually, an aerial battle distracted the blue dasher long enough for a new squatter to arrive, a lovely scarlet skimmer. When I first showed these photos to Elizabeth, she asked, "Is there really a dragonfly that color?" thinking, I guess, that I had tweaked the color with a graphics program.


Slightly larger than the blue dasher, the scarlet skimmer fiercely defended that stick for the 30 or so minutes I sat there. Notice his abdomen fully tilted up as he signals his unwillingness to give up the territory. His posture looks like the dragonfly equivalent of Mr. Miyagi's "crane" karate pose, open but deadly:


Elizabeth pointed out the similarity between this dragonfly battle and the epic clash of Obi Wan Kenobi [who weilds a blue light sabre] and Darth Vader [with his red light sabre] in Star Wars.


Bear with me here!

"I've been waiting for you, Obi Wan. We meet again at last."

"The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master."

"Only a master of evil, Darth."

"Your powers are weak, old man."

"You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!"

Little World, no. 1

When I was an invincible teenager, I used to walk barefoot around the neighborhood lake. One time I stepped on a rusty fishhook someone had carelessly discarded. Sometimes a foot landed in dog poop or on a mound of fire ants. And on one occasion, while strolling through a patch of clover, I got stung by a bee.

My neighbors consider clover a weed, although it is possible to buy seeds online and plant them as ground cover. I understand why people pull this plant from their lawns. The leaves are nondescript, and the flowers, viewed from eyes five or six feet off the ground, are nothing special: yellowish white puffballs that brown with age, colors reminiscent of used cigarette butts.

The first time I tried my newest camera lens, a 300 mm, I was shooting anything that caught my eye, not at all attempting to make "art." I took several shots of the puffball flowers in a clover patch. After dumping these images into the computer and viewing them, I was mightily impressed with the intricate petals that fell away from the centers, row by row.

I noticed also that a patch of clover, so inconsequential to me, was a tiny world full of activity. Bees, for example, visited flower after flower collecting nectar and pollen, like migrant workers harvesting fruit in strange groves.

I can't count the times I have stomped through clover—now with feet safe in shoes—while walking the dogs. I don't know how many tiny creatures I have crushed underfoot after Yo-Yo or Bug has dragged me off the sidewalk to one more interesting spot to sniff.

I do know that if I sit quietly by a patch, I will soon notice movement as this little nectar oasis teems with tiny life. I can take a vacation from my giant world to visit a different country, one without UN representation. I get to experience a culture that I don't understand, its citizens speaking and behaving in ways I can't translate with accuracy.

I have friends who are constantly traveling: Germany for spring break, Miami for a conference, New York City for technical training. Part of me feels that I miss something by not leaving home more. And yet when I am visiting a little world underfoot, I do vacation from my everyday life and sample a new culture. Plus I have the travel pictures to prove it!

On Safari in the Neighborhood

What I have noticed since purchasing my camera is that there are plenty of subjects to photograph. Since I am hanging around town this vacation, I decided to shoot suburban wildlife. In Florida we call all the little lizards chameleons, but their true name is anoles. This one guards the gate into the backyard:


We are at the height of the growing season, so many plants are in bloom, attracting a number of species of butterfly and bee. This butterfly was sucking down nectar in my friend Elizabeth's lantana:


As Elizabeth's hibiscuses are full of aphids, ladybugs are easy to find:


Unfortunately, the ladybugs are no defense against the grasshoppers:


The bees have been behaving themselves better, so I have gotten some nice closeups:


By far, I believe that the photo below is my best insect shot. I wish I could say that I studied the owner's manual for the camera and learned how to use the "Sports" mode correctly. But in reality I just got lucky, or perhaps God finally wrested control of my fingers. I am calling this photo "Worshipping at the Altar of Jasmine."

The Cockroach

Mrs. Perfect owns a silky terrier named Muffin, Button or Zipper—I can never remember. I call the dog "the Cockroach." She's the color of a giant palmetto bug and scurries around so quickly and erratically that she seems to have six legs. Mrs. Perfect also has a white picket fence, the slats of which are spaced widely enough that the Cockroach can escape, which she does daily. The dog then runs across the street to leave pee-mail on my lawn for the basenjis and, if the cat is out, yap at and chase Felix. Eventually, Mrs. Perfect will realize that her dog is loose and stands on her steps to shout, "Come here!" a command the Cockroach ignores. Then Mrs. Perfect will come stomping after the dog, shouting, "Come here! Come here now!" which the Cockroach believes is an invitation to play and so initiates a chase down the street. It's obvious who is the alpha in that relationship.

On most days, I find the Cockroach merely annoying. If she squeezes through the fence when I am working in the front yard, I have to tolerate her standing in the street barking at me. If I want to walk the basenjis, I have to wait until Mrs. Perfect finally catches the Cockroach so that my dogs don't mistake the little mutt as prey. Yesterday, however, was different.

I was watching the news when Yo-Yo and Bug ran to the front window, their attention fixed on the drama unfolding outside. The Cockroach was loose again; Mrs. Perfect was chasing her over my front lawn. This time when the Cockroach came to terrorize Felix, Felix was already in a stand-off with Joey, the neighbor's cat. The situation was tense, tails low and twitching, ears plastered against each cat's head. The Cockroach came roaring up anyway, with Mrs. Perfect shouting, "No! NO! Come HERE!" One of the cats, I didn't see which, wheeled around and swatted the Cockroach, startling her enough that Mrs. Perfect could finally scoop up the dog and take her home.

When I took Yo-Yo out for her walk later that evening, Mrs. Perfect [who must have been watching for me?] ran out on her steps and shouted across the street, "Did you hear me yelling under your windows?"

"Yes." I thought, silly me, I was about to get an apology for the noise and trespassing.

"Muffin [or Button or Zipper] was after your cats ..." [Because I'm not married, Mrs. Perfect believes every cat in the neighborhood belongs to me.]

I started to say not to worry, that the cats could take care of themselves, when Mrs. Perfect added "... but they got her." Matthew, her son, wailed, "Her face is bleeding!"

It was then I realized that the whole situation, in Mrs. Perfect's eyes, was my fault. If I didn't have a cat who liked to lie on the front sidewalk, her dog wouldn't have gotten scratched because, of course, it wasn't her fault that her perfect white picket fence wasn't escape proof or that she had no control over the Cockroach. There was no problem with her dog in my yard terrorizing the cats, but it wasn't okay that the cats defended themselves.

I expected that today she would come over demanding that I pay a vet bill, but she must have told the story to enough people whose sympathy was with me because I never got the visit. It's too bad that spraying the yard perimeter with Raid won't keep that damn dog out.

Mrs. Perfect and the Trap

I have buried three baby opossums this summer, one right after the other over the course of three days. I think they were emerging from under my house in search of food, water, and Ma. I live in a home built in the 1940s, up off the ground on cinderblocks so that the subterranean termites can't easily get to the wood frame. Underneath the house has been a "Club Mammal," offering temporary shelter to stray and pregnant cats, raccoons, and opossums [probably citrus rats, too, but I don't like to think about them]. None of these critters have bothered me, and I even adopted one of the cats who crawled out, all skin and bones, with a broken leg. That baby opossums were starving to death under the house did, however, upset me, especially since I have a pretty good idea what happened to their mother.

I live across the street from Mrs. Perfect, a cute blonde with an eleven-year-old son. Mrs. Perfect used to be one half of the quintessential Perfects, a family that deviated so little from the ideal that I was convinced they had struck a deal with the Devil. Mr. Perfect had a good job with the airlines, drove the black Volvo, cut the emerald, weed-free grass on weekends, and helped raise the blond, baseball-loving son. Mrs. Perfect was a stay-at-home mom, drove the matching white Volvo, and kept Mr. Perfect busy with home improvement projects and social events. She ventured out of the house on the pretext of watching her husband and Matthew play catch but was really evaluating whose front lawn was starting to compete in beauty with her own or, more often, whose front lawn was in need of fertilizer, water, insecticide, better landscaping, and the like. [I can picture Mrs. Perfect in the bathroom asking, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whose yard is better than mine?" only to be told that none in the neighborhood could compare.]

Mr. Perfect has since left for the arms of another woman, and Matthew seems to prefer his father's company because I hardly ever see him, and when I do observe him with his mother, he has the sullen attitude of a seventeen-year-old on drugs. Despite the divorce, Mrs. Perfect still maintains her perfect yard where she tolerates no ugliness.

Now, opossums are fucking ugly creatures. They have oily, wiry fur and a mouth full of dangerous teeth. They hiss like angry alligators, resemble giant rats, and get into the trash. Of course, Mrs. Perfect would never allow opossums to live under her house, although several have tried, especially after so many of their natural homes—the big, half-rotten oak trees that lined the streets—came crashing down after Charley, and then Francis, and then Jeanne. When Mrs. Perfect discovered the first unwanted squatter, she enlisted the help of the Ex, who brought a cage trap to catch the poor animal. After the trap was sprung, the Ex came to retrieve the "horror" and release it somewhere else. Unfortunately, Mrs. Perfect must have been passing notes to the cute guy in biology the day her teacher explained that "Nature abhors a vacuum," so as soon as the critter kingdom realized that primo real estate was on the market, another opossum moved underneath her home. The Ex took care of that one, and then the next, and then the next.

From what I have observed, Mrs. Perfect is a great manipulator. I can hear her argument: "Your son plays in the yard. Opossums carry rabies. Do you want Matthew to have to get all of those painful shots because you allowed vermin to live under the house?" Unfortunately, the food that baited the trap must have attracted the hungry mother who lived under my house, and after her "relocation," the babies, too young to care for themselves, crawled out to die.

What Mrs. Perfect will never realize is that her perfect yard which no weed mars, where no grass runner dares to creep out of its place onto the sidewalk, is a cage trap itself. It limits her options as if she were the caught animal. In her attempt to create a static ideal and hold back change, everyone who knows her finally gets so frustrated with her impossible standards that they "relocate." And she pays as dire consequences as those that my baby opossums faced.