No species but man, so far as is known, unaided by circumstance or climate change, has ever extinguished another, and certainly no species has ever devoured itself, an accomplishment of which man appears quite capable.

— Peter Matthiessen

Mom dragged me out to the nether regions of the family farm one fine day in late May as she needed help learning how to take macro shots with her camera.  There, upon the dead remains of the underground house once envisioned as the xenogere family homestead for years to come, we chanced upon a bit of native flora, one lively plant called sensitive brier (a.k.a catclaw brier, sensitive vine littleleaf mimosa, native mimosa; Mimosa nuttallii, or sometimes Mimosa microphylla).

I first introduced you to this plant with the last photo shown in this post.  Here are a few others.

Yet something continually drew me back to that original photo.  My eyes wanted to see something more clearly which I had not seen before, at least not with any degree of clarity.

So I went back to that image.  Sure enough, hidden inconspicuously in one tiny spot I stumbled upon this small creature.

And as I studied the remaining images, I finally reveled in the discovery of one clear picture that showed precisely what the camera had seen but that my eyes had completely missed.

Without any hesitation, I recognized immediately the tiny syrphid who’d been busy with its own business while I ignorantly photographed it as though it didn’t exist.  This, poppets, is a fly.  More specifically, and despite its attempt to conceal itself beneath the camouflage of a predator, you’re looking at an example of Toxomerus marginatus.

These wee and winged beings are difficult to catch with the naked eye simply because they’re so small.  Too often, and certainly as was the case with me, they flit about effortlessly in our field of vision, yet they do so almost invisibly.

In love do you find contentment?  In love do you caress repose?  Or in the most magical of emotions do you, like so many others, don the robes of awareness, of compassion, of worry, of heartbreak, of fatigue?  Tell me, dearest friend, if you are indeed a true lover, what life shall your flesh wear, for does not the body live only as happily as the anguished soul allows?

The shore and I are lovers, drawn together by desire and pulled apart by the wind. I come from beyond the blue dusk to mix the silver of my foam with the gold of his sand. I cool the heat of his heart with my mouth. At dawn I recite the law of passion into the ears of my lover, and he gathers me to his breast. In the evening I chant the prayer of longing, and he draws near.

[. . .]

In the silence of the night, when the phantoms of sleep have embraced all creatures, I watch, sometimes chanting, sometimes whispering. Woe is me, for watching by night has laid me waste. But I am a lover, and the essence of love is wakefulness.

This is my life, and that which is my life I must do.

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Last night the storms billowed in under the cover of darkness.  They had visited upon us great sorrows throughout the fullness of the previous night, and again around ten last evening they arrived with violence and torrents.  Like shadow ghouls hiding betwixt the earth and stars, they came in fits and starts, magnificent phantoms of lightning bellowing their war cries through the air in tremendous claps of thunder, and with them they brought more rain.

A tumultuous sleep did I grasp to my breast through the onslaught.  Even as my body desperately begged for rest, fatigued as it was from a long week of toiling labor, I awoke constantly to the sound of windows rattling, electrified air screaming in deafening roars, and showers pelting the outside of the house as fervent gusts raged.

Toss and turn, I did, for even as such events ring in my ears like so many lullabies, the angry skies saw fit to launch vehement attacks in a steady progression that lasted most of the night.

And today?

Ah, but could we wait yet another six hours . . .

Such a thing will not be, however, for even now the heavens unleash angry words from dark, threatening clouds.  They roil and boil, nature’s own black magic taken form in a potion made of air and water and energy.  And intent.

I feel the air upon my skin like a wet tee shirt dipped in warmth.  The humidity remains high, much higher than normal, its portrait a behemoth of churning shades of gray tossed haphazardly throughout the sky.  I find individuals amongst these celestial beings, yet I also see them questing to join one another so that they might become something more, something stronger, something bigger, something angrier and more powerful and . . .

Well, and more dangerous.

We have yet to clear the flood warning held over our heads for two weeks, one now extended until it is canceled rather than until a specific time.

There exists not one bit of land which does not cave under the weight of the lightest of feet, a mushy substance once called ground that even now seems an entirely different thing, a soft, perplexing thing long passed being wet earth.

What brings Nature upon her angry steeds this afternoon?

More storms.  More rain.

What tempest now rages against us?  What ethereal beast now unleashes its angry tirades on this world?  What tearful leviathan sees not the harm its lamentations cause?

[Kako]

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

— United States Declaration of Independence

I said fall webworms (Hyphantria cunea) had begun a nearly unprecedented invasion of Texas, or at least North Texas where I live.  I even mentioned the virtual downpour of these caterpillars at xocobra and LD’s place, where they fall through the trees in such large numbers that it sounds like rain.  They’re everywhere, something confirmed by the enormous infestation seen in Rick’s back yard as the tiny critters mass their attack and march unmercifully from limb to limb, tree to tree, until they have spun ethereal homes around every last bit of foliage.

And now they have arrived at the xenogere homestead.

Despite the unending rains that have prohibited me from getting out for walks at the lake lest I find myself mired in pits of mud and washed away by floods that don’t end, I have enjoyed witnessing a profound—dare I say biblical?—invasion of this caterpillar species.  They now swarm about my patio en masse from the bushes to the tree, and I even found one today trying to worm its way through the closed doors that lead to the living room (they’ve yet to make their way to the bedroom doors).

This one scampered about the fence as though in a hurry for reasons I could not possibly understand.  And oh how they scamper.

They are indeed fast little insects, what with all the legs involved in locomotion, and I had a terrible time trying to keep up with it as it rushed about in fevered passion to find yet one more leaf, one more branch, one more meal.

I chased it with abandon.  Dozens of clicks of the camera yielded little presentable evidence of the pursuit, however, as too often I found myself in possession of images clearly showing painted wood with a bit of blurry creature in one corner or another.

Yet there it is for all the world to see, a fall webworm enjoying one of the few bits of sunlight we’ve seen ’round these parts in at least two months.  How brief it was, too.

Now, much like what I witnessed at xocobra and LD’s place, not to mention Rick’s place, they rain down from my meager little tree like so much precipitation.  Only a few moments ago I stood and watched more than dozen tumble to the ground from the ligneous outcroppings dangling above my head.  They land, get their wits about them, and promptly climb to something higher than what the earth offers.

And they do these things in vast quantities.

At the family farm in March, though, I enjoyed seeing a large nest of these bottomless herbivores as they struggled to escape a fallen sapling.  Similar to fall webworms in that they build web nests in trees, the eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum) is larger and more colorful.

Mom worried terribly for her dogwoods, so an effort was undertaken to dispatch the horde.  What I didn’t tell her at the time was that such actions are fruitless unless acted upon at the first signs of a colony.  Otherwise, it’s too late.

“A computer and a cat are somewhat alike; they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don’t necessarily share.”

— John Updike

[Loki]

A few things from today’s SpaceWeather.com:

VENUS & SATURN: Saturn and Venus are converging in the sunset sky for a beautiful close encounter this weekend. At closest approach on Saturday, June 30th, the two planets will be a mere 2/3rds of a degree apart. It’s a pretty sight for the unaided eye, and a great target for backyard telescopes. Even small ’scopes will reveal the rings of Saturn and the crescent shape of Venus. Check http://spaceweather.com for sky maps and more information.

FIRST LIGHT FOR AIM: NASA’s AIM spacecraft is sending back its first pictures of noctilucent clouds from Earth orbit. The clouds photographed by AIM have the same intricate structure and electric-blue glow familiar to sky watchers on Earth, but the panoramic view afforded by the spacecraft’s 600 km high orbit is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Check today’s edition of http://spaceweather.com for one of AIM’s first light images plus an updated gallery of ground-based sightings.

The photo of the noctilucent cloud is breathtaking, an illusory, imaginary vision that is a quite real phenomenon right here on Earth.

Isn’t it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?

— Kelvin Throop, III