Speaking of spiders, this is the sixth straight night that another Charlotte has built (or rather rebuilt) her web in front by the garage door just under the outdoor light. Since I keep those lights on all night, she’s found a great place as the light attracts all kinds of flying bugs. Sometimes she re-spins just the circular part of the web. Once or twice, she’s torn down the whole thing and started over. She’s been moving ever closer to the light and the wall of the house in the last few days. I don’t know if that means anything or not.
Another light has attracted one or more preying mantises (walking sticks). They too are feasting on those insects that are unfortunate enough to get too close. These small animals are indeed marvelous creatures of God.
All too soon, this time of year will be over and it will be too cold for these marvels of nature. They’ll die, but will leave their legacy in the form of eggs deposited somewhere…on a leaf, in the ground, on the side of the light, or somewhere else. Those eggs will endure the winter, and then hatch when it warms up next spring. The cycle will then repeat itself as it has for countless eons past.
One might think it difficult to find much nature in a city. And to an extent, that is correct. This environment is more “sterile” than, say, the Flint Hills or the badlands of Western Kansas. But if one looks just a little, there is plenty happening right outside the door that continues to make the Creator apparent to all who will see.
2 comments:
I wouldn't have believed there was so much nature in my own backyard until I started seeing it the last couple years. As a computer nerd, I didn't spend much time in the Big Room With The Blue Ceiling until I started gardening and raising ducks last summer.
Sixth of an acre, and we've got snails and slugs, possums and raccoons, garden spiders and black widows, doves and jays, black swallowtails and hawk moths, field mice and squirrels, honeybees and Mydas flies, sparrows and robins, grass mantises and dead-leaf mantises, owls and hawks, cicadas and grasshoppers, hummingbirds and starlings... you name it. We even had a pair of wild mallards wander through this spring, and a fairly confused deer jogging down the street last fall or so. The migrating Canada geese have so far always aborted the landing when they realize that the duck pond is only a kiddie pool, but one of these days some of them will stop in.
I'm sure you really didn't mean the "badlands" of Western Kansas literally! :-)
Always enjoy your observations.
Why indeed would you wear 3-inch pink heels to a football game!
Kathy
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