Bugaboo

 

One summer day when I was about eight or nine, I was sitting on the floor of my room, possibly reading, when something tickled my back. I brushed at it with my hand then had the surprised of my life when it fell on the floor,way too close for comfort. It was some type of beetle, bigger than a June bug, long and narrow with iridescence that makes it difficult to identify as any one color. After slamming it with my shoe, I spent the next hour or so paging through my dad’s college natural history text trying to figure out what it was. It was only in the last few years that I have settled on ‘cockroach’ after learning that they sometimes grow as large as three inches and live in the forest. I don’t think the one on my back was three inches, but I would bet that it was close. It was a very different species than the little black roach that most people have seen scurry out of sight in their kitchen.

Several years later, I was outside when something buzzed by my head. At first I thought it was a huge bumblebee, but then realized that it was a ruby throated hummingbird. I was astonished at how tiny it was. Last winter, a Rufous hummingbird lit on my strand of Christmas lights long enough for me to take its picture. What a tiny little critter that was perched next to that LED bulb.

Around here, there is a spider commonly called a wolf spider that feeds on ants. During the spring and summer they look like ordinary, although large, brown spiders. In the winter, when they creep indoors, I get a too-close-for-comfort idea of their size. I’ve killed enough of them to say that it is no exaggeration that they are sometimes the size of a small mouse. Certainly, they are bigger than hummingbirds. What a relief it was to find out that if I sprayed for ants, the spiders disappeared. Every fall I go around the perimeter of my house with the most toxic ant spray on the market.

I like small birds. I hate big bugs.

Nancy Sherer

 

 


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