spark

word of the day 189/365: dark

word of the day 176/365: animal

A word chosen by Griff, who couldn't possibly have had any idea of how many animals we'd actually see today.  We started out with a boat tour hosted by Tarpon Bay Explorers. When I set up the tour, I assumed two things: that we'd have more success sighting birds and manatees in the morning, and that it would be easy to make an 8:15 appointment with my early early risers.  I was right on the first point, and the kids did still rise early, but I had grossly misjudged how difficult it is to actually get people motivated and out the door by 8 AM when you have access to that wondrous, glorious, exotic treat, cable TV.  A million thanks to NickJr and Disney for refreshing my commitment to remaining a cable-free household.

So, anyway, once we had broken free of the clutches of early childhood consumerist indoctrination, we headed out to join the breakfast cruise, and made it to the boat just in time.  Waiting for us was quite the spread.  Donuts! Granola bars! Coffee!  Yum.  And that's all before we left the dock.  After that, we were treated to a plethora of nesting egrets and pelicans, ospreys and terns overhead, cormorants on oyster shoals, and some sightings of dolphins and manatees coming up for air.  The kids shared a pair of binoculars around and I enjoyed the information shared by our tour guide.  No spoonbills for me, but getting to see the manatees surfacing (sorry, the photos are completely boring) was exciting for this girl who, once upon a time, pored over National Geographic pictures of these animals and made them the topic of her 5th grade science report. 

When we returned to land, the tour guide opened up an aquarium section of the visitor center and explained a host of different estuarine critters to us.  My boys were the only children there aside from one other infant, and Reese was happy to stare at starfish in a tank, so Griff got a lot of attention from the guide and a chance to hold many of the touch tank critters.  Once again, Xander was anxious about the spider crabs, worrying that we might get pinched by them.  I am happy to report that no such pinching occurred. 

And yet, none of those animals merited word of the day status, because later we found THIS amazing creature right outside our hotel room door:

This grasshopper was ENORMOUS.  I mean, HUGE.  I took a picture of it next to my lens cap but it still failed to capture just how GIGANTIC it was.  I've never seen an insect this big outside of a museum.  Its body, not counting the legs extending behind it, was a good 4"-5" long.  And that color!  Have you ever seen a bright orange grasshopper before?  I hadn't. 

Now, I've handled a lot of bugs, but giant bugs kindof creep me out and I don't really want to touch them. I'm working on it, but not quite there.  While I was laying on the ground trying to capture this guy's image, he* kept turning and walking toward me.  No hopping, no flying away, just this slow, inevitable creep toward me.  With his palps (the thingies hanging down from his mouth) moving the whole time.  Super creepy.  But I was concerned for his safety, worried that another hotel guest might freak out and squash him, so I picked up two plastic Chinese takeout containers we had been using as beach toys and caught him to move him.  Well, once he figured out he had been trapped, he went crazy, leaping frantically inside the cups.  You do NOT want to feel a bug this big leaping inside a cup you're holding.  Yikes.  I moved him to a spot near the fish pond, off the path, where there were plants to hide in. 

The kids, of course, stoked the whole time, begging me to take pictures, checking out this awesome creature, cheering me on for "saving" him from dark strangers, and asking what kind of grasshopper it was.  So after relocating him, I ran for Google.  Apparently this guy is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper, known for being huge and bright and slow-moving (check, check, check).  It's a good thing I didn't pick him up, because when disturbed, they can hiss and excrete a smelly foam that can irritate your skin.  My decision not to pick up something brightly-colored and big = aposematic coloration WIN.  Of course, I can't find a single video of a lubber hissing or spitting or foaming or frothing or poisoning local birds, and in this day and age, if it ain't on YouTube, it ain't happening, so perhaps these grasshoppers just have a zest for colorful attire and a good PR agent.  Moving on.

For the record, these are not locusts.  A friend commented that these bugs "turn into locusts".  Locusts are the swarming phase of specific species of grasshoppers, and Romalea guttata is not one of those species.  They're large, but don't eat much for their size.  They don't fly or swarm.  They don't associate with those Biblical plague-y types. They can, however, be damaging to gardens or crops when large numbers of them are present.  (I'm hoping I did the right thing in letting this one live.)

Finding this guy was the cherry on top of my vacation.  It has already been an excellent, spontaneous, adventurous, soul-nourishing time for me and the boys.  Add a giant bug...who could ask for more?

*male pronouns were used before it suddenly occurred to me (after writing the post) that I could check the sex of this insect.  The presence of an ovipositor suggests that this one is female.  That's what I get for submitting to the patriarchy.

word of the day 174/365: surprise

Vacation art is in full swing here at the West Wind Inn, as Griff and Xander dig into a bag of fine-point sharpies and a stack of blank printer paper that I brought along on our adventure.  He is the one who chose the words with me for the past two days, and today, after a discovery he made, he selected "surprise" for today.

My favorite surprise of the day was a little ice cream shop - not the one we were looking for, but one we settled for after not being able to find the other.  Sanibel Scoops is tucked off to one side of the road, set back a little and without a parking lot of its own.  We parked (somewhat illicitly, I think) by the book store next door (which we visited later, so it's kosher, right?) and walked down and around to the ice cream shop, nearly melting in the heat before reaching the bright blue building.  To get to the door, we had to walk around the side of the house and across a courtyard reeking of rotting fruit.  Heaps of small, overripe, smashed berries were strewn around the yard.  I meant to ask the shopkeepers what kind of tree produced the berries, but forgot.  Why did I forget? Because the ice cream was so awesome, of course.  Frozen blended toffee coffee for me, possibly the best I've ever had.  Xander wanted banana ice cream, and surprisingly, they had it, and it was amazing, perfectly smooth and creamy and with just the right amount of banana.  Reese is a plain vanilla fan and Griff got adventurous with some melty but tasty watermelon sorbet.  But the best part? Eating it in the adorable front room of the house that was decorated with paper lanterns and colorful tile and had several vintage kids' coin-operated rides.  All four of us were taken with Dino, who cost only 25¢, had room for three boys, and played the Flintstones theme song while gently galloping.  Hanna Barbera and icy caffeination, I love you!

Griff's inspiration came in the form of a mysterious...thing...he found on the sidewalk outside our hotel room.  At first glance, we thought it was some kind of dead, dried caterpillar.  Then we hypothesized that maybe it was actually a lost lizard's tail (yeah, it was so dessicated and mysterious that we couldn't tell if it were reptilian or insectoid).  Our final guess was that it might be the abdomen (tail) of a dragonfly.  Who knows.  Certainly not us, at any rate.  But here it is, in all its enigmatic glory:

Other surprises today included an injured heron and horseshoe crab exuviae at Blind Pass and delicious chocolate-chip pancakes at our hotel's restaurant.  Other than that, it was beach time, pool time, a little grocery shopping, some cable TV sampling, shelling, and staying up way too late.  Which is just right.

seeing instars

I think I missed my calling as an entymologist. It's really too bad that I can't have twelve completely different lives. One would be devoted entirely to bugs.

These are box elder beetles; a colony surrounds my garage, covering fallen magnolia leaves and some low plants.  One of my favorite things about box elder bugs (and squash bugs, which are another member of the Coreoidae family) is that in the spring, you find them in large groups that include multiple life stages.  Everything from teeny tiny first instar nymphs through fully-metamorphosed adults, all together.  Sometimes it seems as though single adults are shepherding groups of younger bugs.  If you click on the photo above, you can see labels for the adult beetle and 5th, 4th, and 2nd instars. 

I found a couple of nymphs shedding their exoskeletons and emerging into a new phase of life.  It never ceases to amaze me how delicate they are, and yet how sturdy. 

And just look at this! Brilliant red masses of nymphs against vital spring green.
Look at the guy on the bottom right who's sipping from a fallen flower.

I had a poetry professor in college (can I cash in 1 life to be an English prof?) who finished reading a Seamus Heaney poem to us with a blissed-out expression on his face, looked up, closed the book, and uttered a simple, satisfied "ah."

This is my poetry and my bliss. Ah.

word of the day 119/365: small

The little unlooked-for moments are the things I live for. 

Yesterday I noticed the lifeless critter habitat that houses several overwintered chrysalises and remarked to myself that I really ought to empty it into the compost.  I had assumed that any survivors would eclose early in the season, and since I've been seeing adult swallowtails for three weeks and found eggs over two weeks ago, I'd given ours up for dead. 

But today! Today, Griff and I were walking past the neglected habitat and I heard him exclaim, "oh! a butterfly!"  Sure enough, one full-fledged imago sat on some leaves inside.  If Griff hadn't noticed her (yup, she's female), I probably would have walked on by, since I stopped checking daily a while ago.  She might have starved!  

After giving up just yesterday, finding her today seemed like a miracle, and it added a touch of extra excitement as we freed her from the habitat and watched her fly away over the neighbors' fence.  I've resumed thrice-daily checks on the remaining chrysalis.  Will it eclose and give us another small thrill?

word of the day 101/365: new

Best discoveries in the garden today: the bearded iris are blooming, and a swallowtail butterfly has laid nearly a dozen eggs on the parsley (which itself is a volunteer plant and a nice surprise). 

I'm clearing sod from a piece of our lawn to expand our garden by about a third.  It's slow work by hand but affords me the opportunity to enjoy all the newness of spring - the feel of the dirt, the day-to-day differences that appear, the scent of the latest blooms. 

word of the day 97/365: duped

The boys and I visited Deep Run Park today, hoping to find toad eggs in the creek there.  The toad egg search was unsuccessful, but we did find some other cool stuff, including a frog, a salamander, and lots of sand to play in.

While staring into the water searching for eggs, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.  The movement resembled the crawling of a crayfish.  When I turned to look for it, all I saw was water running over dead sticks.  But then, one of the sticks seemed to move.  I looked harder.  No, just a tiny piece of stick.  Oddly, there were other tiny pieces of stick near it that were exactly the same length.  Very strange.  Then it seemed like maybe I saw the sticks moving again.  I picked one up - no, really just a stick.  Put it back in the water.  In my peripheral vision, again, I was sure I saw some of the little sticks moving against the current, clinging to other, longer sticks, creeping along.  What was going on?

I used a bug jar to scoop up some water with one of the sticks in it and waited.  Sure enough, a creature was living inside!! I examined it with tweezers, thinking perhaps it might be a larval crayfish hiding out inside the stick, which was, perhaps, not a stick, but a rolled-up leaf.  I succeeded in removing it...and then realized that it was no crawdad, it was an insect larva.  Probably some sort of fly associated with wetlands.  Reese handled it and told me that it pinched him a little.  Hmmm. We put it back in the water (so sorry to remove your larval casing, Mr. Insect) and realized that the stream was quite literally crawling with these little guys.  Whatever they were, there were a lot of them. 

Upon arriving home, I googled the dickens out of it.  I believe what we found were caddisfly larvae.  Based on what I read, they are very sensitive to water pollution, so finding them is a indicator that the stream in Deep Run Park is probably in good health.  If you want to see one in action, I found a brief YouTube video that gives a good idea of what this type of bug is like.

I imagine the sticklike appearance of the larval casing evolved to fool predators - as it fooled me - in order to protect the species.  Go, caddisfly!

word of the day 94/365: duality

natural::unnatural
undesirable::desirable
animate::inanimate
complex shape::simple shape
urge to study::urge to eradicate
invertebrate::vertebrate
unexpected::expected
new information::tradition

Coming in from our egg hunt this morning, Griffin found a hitchhiker on one of his eggs.  I have such undecided feelings about slugs and what to do about them.  It seems like I'm supposed to loathe them as garden pests and destroy any that I find, but I can't help studying them and setting them free, instead.  How could I kill such a wonderful little thing, with its two pairs of tentacles (one optical, one olfactory)? 

Take a look at a bigger version - what a miracle this despised animal is! Can you see its small mantle, like a saddle on its back? And the pneumostome, which is only open when it's breathing? 

(Less breathless-adoration-of-nature: Dan walks into the room and says, "there's a slug on that egg.  Slugs don't lay eggs, Jess!")

word of the day 72/365: itchy

This may come as a surprise, but I'm mildly-to-moderately arachnophobic.  Just looking at this picture of a toy spider makes my skin crawl all over. Awful. Really, my scalp is even prickling. I still pursue them, photograph them, catch them, and study them.  Every second of it freaks me out, though.

Apparently some hairs on the abdomen of tarantulas can cause severe irritation.  These hairs are supposedly the main ingredient in authentic itching powder.  *shudder*

Griff went full-on literal for this word and asked me to take a picture of him scratching an itch.  I asked him to give the composition some thought while I went to get my camera. Ok, I didn't say "composition", or at least not just that word - I asked him to think about the background, how much of his body he wanted in the frame, where he wanted me to stand, how much space he wanted around his body.  So while I snapped the shutter, it's his work.

in focus: where have you been?

Do you sometimes despair, feeling like you'll never be really good at the thing you love?  You work at it, you obsess over it, but you still feel like you fall short. 

If this is you, here's an exercise for you: find something you create often.  A subject you photograph often, a sample of your knitting, a page of text, a scrapbook, a meal you prepare.  Whatever it is you strive to be good at.  If you're able to find an example of what you produced several years ago, get it (that might be difficult for bakers and musicians and the like).  Lay it in front of you and look through it.  Then get the updated equivalent, the latest pieces you've created, and take a look at that.  What do you notice?  How have you changed?  Do you see evidence of growing skills, changing style?  What do you like about what you produced before, and what do you like about what you've done recently?

For my comparison, I dug up two photos of orchard spiders (above), taken one year apart (you can click on them to see bigger versions).  They were taken in different back yards, but both were taken in a garden setting in July, using the same camera and lens.  Both are representative of the type of work I was doing at the time; they seem "average" for me for 2008 and 2009, respectively.  The major difference between them is a user difference.  

What do I see? I see that I learned how to use aperture settings to control depth of focus, and that I pay much closer attention to focus.  I feel like I'm spending more time thoughtfully composing a shot (and that composition is coming easier to me), and I think that difference shows, as well, both in how I approached the spider and my awareness of the background.  My perception of light is much different now and I actively think about how to use it to my advantage.  

When I look at other shots taken this year of the same subject, I feel even better about the direction I'm moving.  Hooray for gaining new skills!  I really, really love these two images from this past July:

Where have you been, where are you going? How do you feel about your journey? Where would you like to go next?