Thursday, February 24, 2011

Many


Apart from the leeches, which I was too busy removing to remember to photograph, there are other things on the farm that are many.

For starters there were the bees. I was sorry when they were removed them from the wall of my house. They weren’t bad neighbours really. I got stung about three times in six months, always through my own carelessness – brushing at something walking on my arm without looking first, stepping on a dead one with bare feet. I used to walk through the buzzing swarm with impunity.

One day, I saw them doing this:


Eventually a friend worked it out: in damp weather the workers pack themselves tightly around the hive entrance (in this case, the wall of my house) to keep out the wet.

Then there were the spiders that hatched out of a cocoon on my potted fig tree – a whole cloud of them, smaller than pinheads. I let them disperse, I’ve lived with spiders all my life and only once got a nasty bite. Besides, look at them! Oooo’s an itty bitty little spider then?


I’ve a respect for spider webs, the art of them, the engineering, and I love the way my porch is strung with crystal threads of dew-wet web every morning.

More likely to appeal to everyone’s taste: the many birds. This afternoon, there were two wild geese, three goslings, a grebe, a cormorant, a kingfisher and a flock of dipping, diving swallows at the dam.

I must say, it’s better than my last lodgings where the only thing that one saw in numbers were flies. I cannot like flies. I doubt anyone does – but I did like shooting them with rubber bands – much more fun than insecticide. Afterwards, I’d sweep the corpses into a little pile and see what my score was. Many. Perhaps it’ll catch on as a bloodsport someday.

21 comments:

  1. Monet Spiders! That is what we call these although I have no idea why. Never found any amongst them, not even a dime. Clearly you live in a Jungle, Andrea, I imagine in the deepest, darkest part of Africa! We have leeches too but they are limited to the medical hospitals and I believe they have a license. It is snowing today in Oregon, one of the latest snows ever! Global colding, I assume? Love your stories and my imagination just goes nuts!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe the new Karate Kid series should feature Jackie Chan shooting rubber bands at spiders...a new twist on the old chopstick number. You must be zen with a rubber band, girl!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tiny baby spiders are so neat to watch slowly dispersing. One year I took a close look at what I thought was a mouse in the grass. It was one of those wolf spiders crawling with a million babies...simply mesmerizing! Last year a wolf spider was in the laundry room loaded with babies, and they all bit the dust, as the thought of them crawling all over the rooms was a bit too much for even me. Love your post of many.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ...... that was a great post even if spiders give me the chills.. i still love to see the dew in their webs! Hope you are feeling okay chickalet!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Beautiful photographs MM. It's obvious you love nature.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Live and let live--I've stepped on a few bees and I leave the spiders alone. Sometimes I move them from inside to outside. Really great photos.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i used to mock people who carried live bugs outside, but i'm finding myself doing just that more & more these days. i guess i'm getting soft in my old age.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I also love watching spiders build webs. One of my favorite things at the lake is that there is always some big spider who spins its web on the railing, and it has to be big because the space is big. Their movements amaze me.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I hate nature. It's all gross and icky and it smells like outdoors. That's why I live in the city where we have that stuff on the run.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I found some spider mites and looked at them under a microscope today (yeah, I have a microscope in my house). Blew my mind. And then I went back to killing them (they're eating my vegetables).

    ReplyDelete
  11. I like seeing your blog because it reminds me that there is a wild world out there filled with nature.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I love nature, but if I saw bees like that I'd be half a continent away in a flash!! It is amazing what I discovered when I learned to simply step outside. It's all here, all around us - no matter where we live.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hey there Maunderer--you haven't posted in a while. I hope it's because you are immersed in nature.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Was thinking about you today and hoping you are okay....

    ReplyDelete
  15. I would have to say that spiders and bees are the things that I fear most in life. Both pictures were absolutely horrifying!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Almost a month without a post. Come back before everyone forgets you.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Are you still there? Everything okay?

    We miss you!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Yes, MM. We miss you!!! Let us hear when you can.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hello, folks. I got a bit hung up. In the run-up to the op, I could think of nothing else, so I made myself too busy to think of anything at all, and since then, I've been pretty much flat on my back. It's good to be up and about again!

    ReplyDelete