Observations of a Morning

(Note:  This post was written in advance last week.  The humidity has since returned.)

As I write this, I’m sitting out on my balcony at 9:15 a.m.  It is 69 delicious degrees out.  I would be sitting in my lounger, but the sun has chosen to glare down at that corner for the moment so I’m at my umbrella table.  There is no humidity and I can feel the caress of a slight breeze on my arm.

As I look around, I see green leaves on all the trees with the exception of the Mulberry, which has quite a few yellow leaves that are dying.  I see two frantic flying insects chasing each other across the balcony, totally ignoring me.  This is their turf, I guess.  A blue jay flies in, landing on a bouncy branch.  He sits there looking around for about a minute and then suddenly takes to the air again.  I always wonder what birds are thinking.  Was that one meeting someone who didn’t show up?  Or does he just fly and rest, fly and rest all day long?  There are those who say that birds have too small a brain to think, but really, how do they know?  You’d have to be bird to really know.

The cicadas just started up, even though it is daylight.  As I sit here and concentrate on listening, I hear all sorts of insect chittering sounds, with a bird call thrown in here and there.  But the insects are definitely winning this Battle of the Bands.  Their calls swell in the air until they are really loud and then they die away.  Then another group with a slightly different melody takes their place.  I can also hear cars on the highway in the distance and a closer car which just honked two times.  Oh, and I just identified another noise.  Interesting.  One by one those yellow Mulberry leaves are falling off the tree much more loudly than you’d expect.  They appear to be the texture of leather and when one falls off, you can hear it hit branch after branch on the way down with a kind of “thump thump.”  And then there is actually a definite “clunk” sound as they hit the driveway.  These are very loud leaves.   I hear, but don’t see, geese honking overhead, perhaps heralding the beginning of the end of summer?

It’s funny.  It’s such a lovely peaceful morning and yet, when you listen, really listen, the air is filled with a non-stop cacophony of sound.  Most of us are so busy or preoccupied and we never notice.  The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there’s never an absence of sound in Nature.  The noises change, but there’s always something.

Anyway, this beautiful, cool morning, which I have been waiting for for so long, is all mine today.  Breathing in the fresh air, observing the pale blue sky, the trees, the birds, and listening to the symphony of the insects – all these things take me away, at least for the moment, from my troubles.

And that little reprieve, however brief it may be, is certainly welcome.

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The Bug Conspiracy

I managed to go a long time this year before I finally caved and turned on the air conditioning.  All during that time I slept with my  three bedroom windows wide open and during the day I kept my balcony’s sliding glass door open in order to catch the breeze and enjoy the sounds of nature.

Apparently, without my realizing it, I was putting out a welcome mat to various and sundry uninvited guests.

Now, finding insects in your home in the summer is not all that unusual.  I’ve always got a friend or two who complain about an infestation of ants in the kitchen or flies buzzing around the house.  In that case the solution is simple.  You deal with them with insect spray and are done with it.

Unfortunately, MY particular bugs are a lot more devious.  They know that if they appeared en masse I’d poison them or call an exterminator.  But these guys are not that obvious.  They’re waging psychological warfare on me.  In other words, they’re showing up one by one, in unlikely places most of the time.

It started in the kitchen with a gnat…one measly gnat.  He was flying in front of me as I was standing at the sink.  Naturally I assumed he was there because I always have a big bowl of fruit on the counter.  But, he went nowhere near the fruit.  When I’d try to swat him, he’d disappear.  If I stood very still by the fruit, he wouldn’t show up.  When I’d go back to what I was doing, he’d start flying in front of my face again.  Finally I caught him between my fingers and executed him and…no more gnats!  Not one replacement or back-up gnat appeared.

A day or so later I was sitting in the living room watching TV when, lo and behold, what did I observe, but a solitary ant walking across the carpet!  I looked around to see if he had brought any friends, but no.  He was alone.  But, what the heck was he doing in the living room?  Had he hitched a ride on the morning paper and jumped off as soon as he got into the house?  It was strange.  Anyway, I don’t like stepping on bugs because it’s hard to get up the squashed mess.  So, I’ve taken to picking up all bugs (except spiders) with my fingers.  I grabbed this guy and escorted him right out the front door and threw him into the front yard.  “Tell your friends they’re not welcome either!” I told him and slammed the door.

“Okay,” I told myself, “Maybe there’s no conspiracy going on here.  Maybe there’s no ‘One-Bug-At-A-Time’ strategy.  Maybe it’s all just a coincidence. After all, they’re only bugs.”

So the next day I was perched on the throne in my master bathroom on the second floor, gazing into the distance and thinking how wonderful it would be if I won the lottery, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  I leaned forward and looked closer and could not believe my eyes!  There on the floor by the door was a fuzzy caterpillar! What the hell?  He was just nonchalantly making his way and I’m sure if I could have heard him, he was singing “Doody-doo, doody-doo. I am here to torture you!” I was so annoyed at the sheer audacity of this guy that I picked him up and gave him a very quick “burial at sea,” if you get my drift.  For crying out loud!  How did he get into my house?  I mean, this guy was obviously too chubby to have slid in through the screen.  And, if he came in through the front door, how did he get to the second floor?

Do these insects have a secret entrance into my home?  Is there a little calendar in their headquarters that lists what day each of them gets a chance at me?  “Okay Beetle, you’re up!” Because if they think this is a big joke, I don’t think it’s very funny.

Now I’ll admit, I haven’t seen any bugs in the house in about three days.  But I know it’s not over.  Oh no, not by a long shot. These guys aren’t through.

They’re just regrouping…

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“Secret Agent” Gnats

We’re reaching that turn in the weather where the days are getting shorter and the mornings have a chill that makes us wonder, “If fall is here, can winter be far away?”  It’s also the time when little creatures in nature are planning a vacation to somewhere warm and dry with plentiful food…like our homes.  I read an article recently by an entomologist who suggested that we would probably be seeing an big influx of spiders in and around our homes.  Now, I have seen the occasional spider who has stopped by to strike fear into my heart by suddenly appearing on a wall or baseboard.  I personally think spiders get their jollies by waiting for that moment we look up and notice them and let out a little scream.  I think they think it’s hilarious.  But I can take on a spider, no problem.  I usually run for some toilet paper, apologize, say goodbye and proceed to squash its little guts out!  I don’t see this as murder because, judging by the stories of spider bites I’ve heard, they’d do it to us without a second thought. People have died from spider bites, so I see spider extermination as justifiable self defense.

No, my particular annoyance this year is gnats.  And not just plain old gnats, but “secret agent” gnats.  Now, one would expect that gnats, being so small, would travel in armies, you know, little “gnat platoons” with strength in numbers.  They’d have a little gnat general who would raise his wing and say something like, “Okay, men, spread out!  Look for for fruit!”  If they engaged in this type of warfare, it would be easy to fight back with a simple application of nerve gas (insect spray.)  But this year’s crop is more sneaky than that.  Just as a country slips an agent over the border quietly, so as not to be noticed, so my gnats are apparently taking advantage of my open windows to smuggle themselves through a hole in the screen to begin their undercover work.  In the past few weeks I have been finding one gnat in the oddest, most unlikely places.  There will be one gnat right in the middle of the bathroom floor.  The next day I’ll find one gnat in the middle of the kitchen counter (where, by the way, there is no food uncovered.)  I even found one gnat sitting on a living room end table!  I can only assume by this odd behavior that they were sent to do surveillance on me.  I can only imagine their reports to their superiors:

“Yes General, this is Private Gnat One, reporting from the bathroom.  Tonight I saw the human naked.  It was horrifying!”

“This is Private Gnat Two, General, reporting from the kitchen!  I am on a white surface that goes on for miles, but I see nothing digestible.”

“Sir, Private Gnat Three reporting in from the living room coffee table.  I’m afraid Four has bought the farm!  The human discovered him hovering over her tea.  She took the offensive.”

These guys must think they’re invisible because whenever I come across one, it just sits there, awaiting its fate.  I can honestly say that the last thing that goes through its tiny mind is…MY FINGER!  Gross?  Maybe.  But all’s fair in love and war.  I have to make it perfectly clear that mine is a clean house and enemy agents will NOT be tolerated!

And, to be honest, in this world where so little is within our control, it’s actually kind of nice to be known, at least in the insect world, as “Star, the Gnat Terminator!”

Yeah, baby, don’t mess with ME!

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