Today I was giving the dog a tour of the back yard and my eye was caught by movement around the butterfly bush that was different from the staggery flight of the pollen-laden bumblebee. I looked up into the flowers and spied a hummingbird moth. I keep an eye out for them every summer because they’re fascinating little things. They look like shrimp with wings. Their see-through wings beat like the hummingbirds’—invisibly. I jump up and down and clap my hands like a child when they arrive.
I looked toward the deck, and a male ruby throated hummingbird was dueling for space with two bumblebees and several yellow jackets. Other hummingbirds were checking every bud on the cardinal flowers. I looked down at the dog lolling in the grass and a damsel fly was sunning itself on his back. When I leaned over to pet him, a katydid landed between my feet, gave its face a wash, and zipped away again. This one (photo) got into the kitchen one evening as I was checking food doneness on the grill. It took me a while to find it even after it started singing. Luckily I was able to catch and release it outside without damaging its big lime-colored wings. They’re pretty noisy at night, and a night in the house would probably have killed it, if not driven me nutts.
This praying mantis was as curious about me as I was him last year. I saw several babies earlier this season, but have yet to see an adult. They usually hang out on my deck and front porch closer to fall, so there’s time yet to tell whether they’re making it. When I had my roof replaced 5 years ago, I was in a panic about the survivability of the praying mantises living in the front garden as men pitched shingles and old wood from the roof into a dumpster for two days. At one point, I ran out of the house waving my arms, shouting wait! wait! to people who really didn’t speak much English, but they paused long enough for me to scoop one up and provide it safe passage to a neighbor’s garden. I imagine the roofers were all shaking their heads behind my back as I gingerly carried him across the lawn, but they seemed to work a little more carefully after that, perhaps so I wouldn’t find any crushed “pets” after they left. (I had asked them on the first day to beware of the toads under the front bushes and the baby snakes under the back bushes, never sure they knew what I meant.)
Last night on our last outing of the day, the dog was very interested in something in the grass, so I trained my flashlight on the spot and there was a cicada nymph trying to traverse the dew-wet blades, obviously just out of the ground and looking for a place to molt its shell. I’ve only ever seen their shell skeletons hanging from the hosta flowers in the morning, but if you go to Wikipedia, you can watch one from Ohio emerge in sped-up time and listen to recordings of their "singing." I went to a meeting in Chicago last time the 17-year locusts were hatching and had never and hope to never experience anything like that again! Outdoors, you could not have a conversation without shouting as loud as you could, and you could not walk far without stepping on them no matter how hard you tried. But I am nostalgic for their buzzing noise by the time summer comes and keep a shiny cicada popper lure in my fishing tackle box for enticing bass on warm summer evenings.
As I kept the dog on a taught leash away from the struggling bug (not easy to do leaning over in the dark with a flashlight), I thanked him for finding it for me and wished it wasn’t too dark to take a picture of the prehistoric-looking thing, all the more creepy in the middle of the night.
These photos were taken by me. Please do not use or duplicate in any manner.
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