#Saw tons of frogs and bugs

[merenq]

Went to a zoo today and saw a maned wolf irl for the first time. day good

[nintendont2502]

Waitomg if you're from Australia have you ever seen this funny guy

YES!! idk what they are but they're v cute and I love them

[headspace-hotel]

Nature is healing.

I burned the Meadow a couple weeks ago. At first it looked like nothing but charred ashes and dirt, with a few scorched green patches, and I was afraid I'd done something terrible. But then the sprouts emerged. Tender new leaves swarming the soil.

My brother and I were outside after dark the other day, to see if any lightning bugs would emerge yet. We had been working on digging the pond. That old soggy spot in the middle of the yard that we called "poor drainage," that always splattered mud over our legs when we ran across it as children—it isn't a failed lawn, and it never was.

Oh, we tried to fill in the mud puddles, even rented heavy machinery and graded the whole thing out, but the little wetland still remembered. God bless those indomitable puddles and wetlands and weeds, that in spite of our efforts to flatten out the differences that make each square meter of land unique from another, still declare themselves over and over to be what they are.

So we've been digging a hole. A wide, shallow hole, with an island in the middle.

And steadily, I've been transplanting in vegetation. At school there is a soggy field that sadly is mowed like any old field. The only pools where a frog could lay eggs are tire ruts. From this field I dig up big clumps of rushes and sedges, and nobody pays me any mind when I smuggle them home.

I pulled a little stick of shrubby willow from some cracked pavement near a creek, and planted it nearby. From a ditch on the side of the road beside a corn field, I dug up cattail rhizomes. Everywhere, tiny bits of wilderness, holding on.

I gathered up rotting logs small enough to carry and made a log pile beside the pond. At another corner is a rock pile. I planted some old branches upright in the ground to make a good place for birds and dragonflies to perch.

And there are so many birds! Mourning doves, robins, cardinals and grackles come here in much bigger numbers, and many, many finches and sparrows. I always hear woodpeckers, even a Pileated Woodpecker here and there. A pair of bluebirds lives here. There are three tree swallows, a barn swallow also, tons of chickadees, and there's always six or seven blue jays screaming and making a commotion. And the goldfinches! Yesterday I watched three brilliant yellow males frolic among the tall dandelions. They would hover above the grass and then drop down. One landed on a dandelion stem and it flopped over. There are several bright orange birds too. I think a couple of them are orioles, but there's definitely also a Summer Tanager. There's a pair of Canada Geese that always fly by overhead around the same time in the evening. It's like their daily commute.

The other day, as I watched, I saw a Cooper's Hawk swoop down and carry off a robin. This was horrifying news for the robin individually, but great news for the ecosystem. The food chain can support more links now.

There are two garter snakes instead of one, both of them fat from being good at snaking. I wonder if there will be babies?

But the biggest change this year is the bugs. It's too early for the lightning bugs, but all the same the yard is full of life.

It's like remembering something I didn't know I forgot. Oh. This is how it's supposed to be. I can't glance in any direction without seeing the movement of bugs. Fat crickets and earwigs scuttle underneath my rock piles, wasps flit about and visit the pond's shore, an unbelievable variety of flies and bees visit the flowers, millipedes and centipedes hide under the logs. Butterflies, moths, and beetles big and small are everywhere.

I can't even describe it in terms of individual encounters; they're just everywhere, hopping and fluttering away with every step. There are so many kinds of ants. I sometimes stare really closely at the ground to watch the activities of the ants. Sometimes they are in long lines, with two lanes of ants going back and forth, touching antennae whenever two ants traveling in opposite directions meet. Sometimes I see ants fighting each other, as though ant war is happening. Sometimes the ants are carrying the curled-up bodies of dead ants—their fallen comrades?

My neighbor gave me all of their fallen leaves (twelve bags!) and it turns out that piling leaves on top of a rock and log pile in a wet area summons an unbelievable amount of snails.

I always heard of snails as pests, but I have learned better. Snails move calcium through the food chain. Birds eat snails and use the calcium in their shells to make egg shells. In this way, snails lead to baby birds. I never would have known this if I hadn't set out to learn about snails.

In the golden hour of evening, bugs drift across the sky like golden motes of dust, whirling and dancing together in the grand dramas of their tiny lives. I think about how complicated their worlds are. After interacting with bees and wasps so much for so long, I'm amazed by how intelligent and polite they are. Bumble bees will hover in front of me, swaying side to side, or circle slowly around me several times, clearly perceiving some kind of information...but what? It seems like bees and wasps can figure out if you are a threat, or if you are peaceful, and act accordingly.

I came to a realization about wasps: when they dart at your head so you hear them buzzing close by your ears, they're announcing their presence. The proper response is to freeze and duck down a bit. It seems like wasps can recognize if you're being polite; for what it's worth, I've never been stung by a wasp.

As night falls, bats emerge and start looping and darting around in the sky above. If the yard seems full of bugs in the day, it is nothing compared to the night.

I'm aware that what I'm about to describe, to an entomophobe, sounds like a horror movie: when i walk to the back yard, the trees are audibly crackling and whirring with the activity of insects. Beetles hover among the branches of the trees. When we look up at the sky, moths of all sizes are flying hither and thither across it. A large, very striking white moth flies past low to the ground.

Last year, seeing a moth against the darkening sky was only occasional. Now there's so many of them.

I consider it in my mind:

When roads and houses are built and land is turned over to various human uses, potentially hundreds of native plant species are extirpated from that small area. But all of the Eastern USA has been heavily altered and destroyed.

Some plants come back easily, like wild blackberry, daisy fleabane, and common violets. But many of them do not. Some plants need fire to sprout, some need Bison or large birds to spread them, some need humans to harvest and care for them, some live in habitats that are frequently treated with contempt, some cannot bear to be grazed by cattle, some are suffocated beneath invasive Tall Fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, honeysuckle or Bradford pears, and some don't like being mowed or bushhogged.

Look at the landscape...hundreds and hundreds of acres of suburbs, pastures, corn fields, pavement, mowed verges and edges of roads.

Yes, you see milkweed now and then, a few plants on the edge of the road, but when you consider the total area of space covered by milkweed, it is so little it is nearly negligible. Imagine how many milkweed plants could grow in a single acre that was caretaken for their prosperity—enough to equal fifty roadsides put together!

Then I consider how many bugs are specialists, that can only feed upon a particular plant. Every kind of plant has its own bugs. When plant diversity is replaced by Plant Sameness, the bug population decreases dramatically.

Plant sameness has taken over the world, and the insect apocalypse is a result.

But in this one small spot, nature is healing...

[stories-by-rie]

129 i'm not lost, i'm growing roots

prequel to this piece but also works as a standalone. warning for character death and sort of body horror, little over 1k words

~~~~

The first time Rabea had entered The Forest, she hadn’t survived out of wisdom or luck or spite. No, it hadn’t been due to herself at all. If someone asked her now, Rabea tended to smile the sad smile of nostalgia and reply “I survived out of mercy”. People then tended to nod as if they knew what Rabea was talking about.

Mercy was a concept many people heard of but weren’t familiar with.

Rabea was familiar now.

She was what she used to call an experienced adventurer, which was why she knew that The Forest was off-limits. Only younglings and desperate people entered. People who were too hungry for fame and glory, or people who hungered for the insanely high prize Irma the Immortal had set for whoever retrieved The Book behind The Wall at the heart of The Forest.

Short: idiots to which Rabea did not belong.

And why would she even attempt to venture inside? There were plenty of giant hiccuping frogs and deers of devastation to hunt in perfectly regular forests!

And then—

“I'll attempt it”, Margo said while they both walked down the market. Rabea choked on a bite of Kartoffelpuffer.

They had seen one of Irma the Immortal’s posters and laughed about it wholeheartedly. So why…?

“Why?” Rabea asked.

"Why not?" Margo laughed and then elbowed her in the side. "Don't worry, I'm just joking."

But when she thought that Rabea wasn't looking, she folded—folded—the poster and put it in her coat's pocket.

It is something Rabea notices and later remembers, but in that moment does not pay the attention to that it needed. Something that she spends a lot of time dwelling on on her deathbed. Poison in her cup, but that's another story.

What happened is this: They spent a warm summer night in each other's embrace and said goodbye the next day as they usually did. Rabea had been hired to find the tear of the moon and Margo had mentioned another job as well. They'd find each other after, they always did.

So Rabea fought the guardian of the tear and then outsmarted a wild boar and finally brought the tear to a collector of rarities who paid her in statues of The Big Fourteen made of lead, which meant that she needed two extra weeks carrying those to the vault. And then another three weeks in which she had to fill out the papers and argue with the vault's master whether she had 'rightfully acquired' the treasure. Rabea didn't know who in their right mind would have stolen the tons of lead but that did not convince the master.

So perhaps she simply had been late and missed Margo. There was no reason to worry yet.

She went out and brought down what turned out to be the owner of the lead mine—which, certainly there was a thing going on there—returned early and waited, and waited.

That was when she remembered the folded poster.

Maybe it would have been right to call her impulsive, but not once had Rabea regretted her hasty departure. She stepped into The Forest with a cheap map the lady in the bookstore had gifted her with a head shake. The greenery surrounded her. Clean air surrounded her, bugs in the air and if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought it to be just any regular forest.

Until she encountered the slug pit, the spiky spider webs and earworms.

Rabea stumbled into a clearing, beaten and exhausted, bruised all over. Though just as stubborn as before. She would not, could not leave without Margo.

“Ouch, that was my leg”, she heard a voice behind her. When she turned around, she saw a big shape in the ground, looking vaguely humanoid.

The thing slowly sat up and Rabea grew certain that it had at least been human at some point. But now there were forget-me-nots sprouting from the socket of what used to be an eye, slime running down the back where it had lain on the ground and started to slowly become one with the ground. The skin was covered or replaced by moss and rough bark—

Rabea had thought it to be a tree’s root when she had walked past it initially. Mostly also because of the mushrooms growing from what she now knew were the joints.

“Excuse me, I didn’t see you there.”

The thing opened the mouth and revealed sharp teeth, not white but yellow and brown. “It’s alright, it happens a lot. It’ll grow back”, it said and put some fallen leaves over the hole Rabea had created in its leg. When it looked up, it seemed as if its eyes widened, some new flower buds popped open in one of them. “Oh”, it said, “it’s you.”

“Me?” Rabea asked. 

“Yes! What are you doing here?”

“I am looking for my friend. I think she got lost around here, I want to help her find the way back home.”

“Oh, I love you too, but I am not lost, I am just growing roots.”

And the thing about mercy is that it never comes alone. Mercy is granted for people who face an unacceptable fate. Mercy is granted out of the hunger for power and only very rarely out of compassion. Most certainly, mercy is prefaced by begging. And begging is born out of fear.

As ivy started to wrap around Rabea’s ankles, she started to fear like never before.

“No, no, no, no!” With every step she took, another vine shot out and tried to hold onto her. She tried to free herself with her sword, with the magic potion she had bought recently. Dispair flooded her veins, an utter helplessness. It was too much, too many, she was alone, oh so alone, and oh by the greatest treasures, she just wanted to be safe, to be embraced, to. Get. Away. Get. Help.

“Margo! Please, oh no, please help me!” she yelled and the thing responded, grabbed some of the vines and helped free her.

“Run!” Margo yelled back and it looked at Rabea then, no tears running but an ant crawling out of the empty eye socket. 

“I’ll return!” Rabea promised and then she ran. Because she had been granted this mercy and everything in her begged her to take the chance. Because not taking it would have been the greatest scorn.

While it might have felt like betrayal to leave at that moment, Rabea did keep her promise. She came back and never without forget-me-nots. To the place where Margo had grown roots.

[pbandjesse]

Oh man I am exhausted. I didn't think I was going to be this tired but it just hit me like a wave. I'm laying in my hammock at Camp waiting for James to come pick me up. And I cannot wait for them to come and get me because I'm so tired. I cannot wait to go home.

I don't really nice day though. I did not sleep well last night which is probably contributing to how exhausted I feel now. Waking up was very difficult. But I got up and got dressed and things were okay. My lips were really scabby. They're definitely healing but it's slow going. I got dressed and my hair felt very dirty but I was cute. And soon me and James were heading out. They had already put their bike on the car and they made me a sandwich and we still stopped at McDonald's to get hash browns and a soda. It was a nice drive out to camp even though the sun was in my face and I was very tired. The soda helped me wake up.

When we got to Camp James drove me up to the art building and I went inside to get my shoes before I grabbed my backpack and stuff and we said goodbye. But very quickly I was calling them to come back for me because Elizabeth texted that my materials were at the lodge and she wanted me to drive them over to the pond. So that was fine. James came back and carded me around. Before saying goodbye for real.

And today would be really fun. I was a little nervous because I don't know a ton about macro invertebrates and vertebrates. But these kids were awesome and really just made my life so much easier. We were a little nervous when we saw the numbers because there were so many chaperones. We're talking like a two to one ratio. But it ended up being totally fine. When the kids got there we had just finished setting up Nick's program. He was running a little behind. And he was teaching about the watershed so he had the most science heavy one really. So when he got in right before the kids got there I was quizzing him on his facts about the Chesapeake Bay. Just being silly.

A bunch of the kids were former campers so that was pretty cool. And I say former loosely because most of them will be coming back this year. And we split up into our groups and then I took them over to the pond.

One of the parents asked how I could handle touching the bugs. And really I'm not very comfortable touching bugs. But when I'm at camp I have to turn off the part of my brain that would freak out because if I didn't I would not be able to comfortably be here. The only thing I don't like are spiders that move too fast. And I had a really good system going for all four programs today. I would stand on the picnic table and explain what we were doing. I asked him a few questions. I told them the rules and the boundaries. And then I sent them off. I had been set up with water so that we could put in anything we found. And they found a lot of cool stuff. I decided I would keep track of everything on the board throughout the day and see if we found new stuff every time and we did. If you look at my chart the first screen words are the first group then red and then black and then green again. And if something has a star next to it that means a group found it a second time. The frogs that we found were mating which was very funny because the kids kept asking why are these frogs hugging. And we found the same two frogs twice which I thought was really funny. We found one gigantic tadball. And about a thousand little tadpoles. We found so many interesting bugs and worms and they would get so jazzed when they found something that no one had seen. They were all really good. No one fell in the pond. Someone did slip in the mud but they didn't end up all wet. Just a little muddy. The parents told me that I was so good with the kids and that was very encouraging.

At lunch I went to the art building to grab my stuff and kind of made a mental plan of where I was going to start moving stuff when I was done. I ate lunch in the kitchen with Elizabeth and the others. And We talked about former camper is and seeing them grow up and how it's very weird. And then it was time for our afternoon programs. Which went really quickly. The kids would help me clean up at the end and I left everything in the sun to drive. And we were saying goodbye. It was a good day.

I talked to Joe for a little while. About changing the Native American program and he showed me some materials that came in the mail that he wasn't sure if they were for me or not. They weren't. And then I went to the lodge where we had a meeting about May and the calendar of events. Who's on when. All of us are basically full time but I'm leaving for 2 weeks and it was just good to kind of put everything out in the universe so that we all knew.

That meeting took forever though. For like no reason. But it was fine. I asked Dachelle and Sarah if they wouldn't mind driving the gator to pick up the nature program materials and help me set up the Native American stuff. And they ended up just doing all of it because they're so lovely. I would stay behind in the cafeteria and put away all the tables and chairs and get everything set up and cleaned. And once I was done that around 3:30 I went up to the art building to start getting that less of a disaster.

And it really wasn't that bad. It's more that it's just messy and crowded. I wanted to move around a few shelves and get rid of some stuff. So I would spend the next couple hours moving things and listening to podcasts and getting a lot accomplished honestly. To the point where I'm very sore now and very tired. It's also gotten a lot colder so now I'm shivering. But James should be here soon. And they're going to help me take a few things to the dumpster before we go home. I am really proud of all the work I did today in the art building. It's not my final solution for how it's going to look but it's going to be way nicer to work in there for any programs that we need it for for the next month or so.

I feel good about everything that I did today I think I'm going to sleep a lot better tonight. When we get home I hope to wash my hair and eat something warm. And maybe try to go to sleep early. Which is why I'm writing this now. Because I very much want to close my eyes as soon as possible.

Tomorrow I'm going to the museum but it will be an easy day. I'm just watching Michael learn a role in the cannery. And I've seen him do it before and I know he's going to be fine. And then I hope to finish my commission for Rosia And just enjoy the day. I hope that you have all had a very nice day today. And that tomorrow is even better. Sleep well my friends. Be safe.

[pbandjesse]

Oh man I am exhausted. I didn't think I was going to be this tired but it just hit me like a wave. I'm laying in my hammock at Camp waiting for James to come pick me up. And I cannot wait for them to come and get me because I'm so tired. I cannot wait to go home.

I don't really nice day though. I did not sleep well last night which is probably contributing to how exhausted I feel now. Waking up was very difficult. But I got up and got dressed and things were okay. My lips were really scabby. They're definitely healing but it's slow going. I got dressed and my hair felt very dirty but I was cute. And soon me and James were heading out. They had already put their bike on the car and they made me a sandwich and we still stopped at McDonald's to get hash browns and a soda. It was a nice drive out to camp even though the sun was in my face and I was very tired. The soda helped me wake up.

When we got to Camp James drove me up to the art building and I went inside to get my shoes before I grabbed my backpack and stuff and we said goodbye. But very quickly I was calling them to come back for me because Elizabeth texted that my materials were at the lodge and she wanted me to drive them over to the pond. So that was fine. James came back and carded me around. Before saying goodbye for real.

And today would be really fun. I was a little nervous because I don't know a ton about macro invertebrates and vertebrates. But these kids were awesome and really just made my life so much easier. We were a little nervous when we saw the numbers because there were so many chaperones. We're talking like a two to one ratio. But it ended up being totally fine. When the kids got there we had just finished setting up Nick's program. He was running a little behind. And he was teaching about the watershed so he had the most science heavy one really. So when he got in right before the kids got there I was quizzing him on his facts about the Chesapeake Bay. Just being silly.

A bunch of the kids were former campers so that was pretty cool. And I say former loosely because most of them will be coming back this year. And we split up into our groups and then I took them over to the pond.

One of the parents asked how I could handle touching the bugs. And really I'm not very comfortable touching bugs. But when I'm at camp I have to turn off the part of my brain that would freak out because if I didn't I would not be able to comfortably be here. The only thing I don't like are spiders that move too fast. And I had a really good system going for all four programs today. I would stand on the picnic table and explain what we were doing. I asked him a few questions. I told them the rules and the boundaries. And then I sent them off. I had been set up with water so that we could put in anything we found. And they found a lot of cool stuff. I decided I would keep track of everything on the board throughout the day and see if we found new stuff every time and we did. If you look at my chart the first screen words are the first group then red and then black and then green again. And if something has a star next to it that means a group found it a second time. The frogs that we found were mating which was very funny because the kids kept asking why are these frogs hugging. And we found the same two frogs twice which I thought was really funny. We found one gigantic tadball. And about a thousand little tadpoles. We found so many interesting bugs and worms and they would get so jazzed when they found something that no one had seen. They were all really good. No one fell in the pond. Someone did slip in the mud but they didn't end up all wet. Just a little muddy. The parents told me that I was so good with the kids and that was very encouraging.

At lunch I went to the art building to grab my stuff and kind of made a mental plan of where I was going to start moving stuff when I was done. I ate lunch in the kitchen with Elizabeth and the others. And We talked about former camper is and seeing them grow up and how it's very weird. And then it was time for our afternoon programs. Which went really quickly. The kids would help me clean up at the end and I left everything in the sun to drive. And we were saying goodbye. It was a good day.

I talked to Joe for a little while. About changing the Native American program and he showed me some materials that came in the mail that he wasn't sure if they were for me or not. They weren't. And then I went to the lodge where we had a meeting about May and the calendar of events. Who's on when. All of us are basically full time but I'm leaving for 2 weeks and it was just good to kind of put everything out in the universe so that we all knew.

That meeting took forever though. For like no reason. But it was fine. I asked Dachelle and Sarah if they wouldn't mind driving the gator to pick up the nature program materials and help me set up the Native American stuff. And they ended up just doing all of it because they're so lovely. I would stay behind in the cafeteria and put away all the tables and chairs and get everything set up and cleaned. And once I was done that around 3:30 I went up to the art building to start getting that less of a disaster.

And it really wasn't that bad. It's more that it's just messy and crowded. I wanted to move around a few shelves and get rid of some stuff. So I would spend the next couple hours moving things and listening to podcasts and getting a lot accomplished honestly. To the point where I'm very sore now and very tired. It's also gotten a lot colder so now I'm shivering. But James should be here soon. And they're going to help me take a few things to the dumpster before we go home. I am really proud of all the work I did today in the art building. It's not my final solution for how it's going to look but it's going to be way nicer to work in there for any programs that we need it for for the next month or so.

I feel good about everything that I did today I think I'm going to sleep a lot better tonight. When we get home I hope to wash my hair and eat something warm. And maybe try to go to sleep early. Which is why I'm writing this now. Because I very much want to close my eyes as soon as possible.

Tomorrow I'm going to the museum but it will be an easy day. I'm just watching Michael learn a role in the cannery. And I've seen him do it before and I know he's going to be fine. And then I hope to finish my commission for Rosia And just enjoy the day. I hope that you have all had a very nice day today. And that tomorrow is even better. Sleep well my friends. Be safe.