LEAF LIFE - Part 3

May 2022

A Few Lessons We have emerged from our many little excursions with some useful lessons and many useless philosophies.

1. Never wear shorts when venturing into the woods.

2. Take with you associates who are, or pretend to be, more courageous than you.

3. If humans are good at playing dumb, weevils are better at playing dead. They can lie motionless on their backs, to spring back to action once you step away.

4. There are many more spiders and beetles than humans on this planet, and more ants than spiders and beetles.

5. Spiders are not insects.

6. Fungi are not plants.

7. Only two things qualify for that ‘creepy-crawly’ tag: the ‘breaking news’ ticker, called a crawler; and the movements of a human infant. So let’s be respectful and call insects just that — insects.

8. Even large wasps with sharp stingers are terrified of tiny red ants. To put it in perspective, if you were a red ant, the wasp would look like a dragon to you. Size matters, but character matters more.

9. If you run headlong into a cobweb, and you certainly will, flailing your arms and looking like a jellyfish will achieve nothing except amusement to the spider and other people.

10. Most creatures in the wilderness are busy mating, feeding, or saving their lives. Words like ‘serene’ and 'pristine' and ‘spectacular’ come more readily if all the nature you see is only on your screen. In reality, it is quite precarious in the real world that exists beyond our steel and concrete and plastic.

11. Life, after all, doesn’t come with a warranty card. Even if it did, you know how warranty cards work.

The last I had learned about insects was in school in the biology class, and only because the subject was compulsory. Now, after several decades spent in the pursuit of things that had no lasting merit, I have begun to discover the real wonder and value of the real world, a world that for the large part belongs to insects and fungi.

Here’s to all the truly wondrous and useful creatures out there, specially the arthropods, including insects, and the entomologists who study them.

I shall now clean my monopods and get ready for my next excursion with my fellow bipeds, one of whom is currently concluding an elaborate and emotional process of colouring and combing his moustache.

That’s how seriously he treats insects.

Note: Only humans were harmed in the making of this project (well, attempts were made). No un-human entity was disturbed, offended or harmed, except for those three persistent mosquitoes.

~*~