Category: Nature

The Spider, the Fly, and the Bee

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Photo ©2007 Steve K. Smith

I’ve developed a routine of coming to a coffee shop in the mornings to work on writing or do some reading. This coffee shop is in a renovated late nineteenth century home and takes up almost the entire first floor.

I try to get there early, just after they open most days, and I have a regular table in the front sunroom right next to a large picture window. I’m there so often even the baristas have started referring to it as “my” table. When the sky is clear it gets sunlight in the morning as soon as the sun clears the roof of the Italian market next door. There are some shrubs along the house outside the window, so the window pane outside doesn’t get washed often.

During the last spring and summer I watched a funnel-weaver spider build a web outside in the lower corner of this window right beside my customary seat. Usually there wasn’t much of interest to see, but occasionally I got to witness a miniature natural drama play out there.

In my area—similar to many, I understand—honeybees are stressed and in decline. Though I encourage clover and other flowers on my lawn for pollinators, and I don’t use pesticides, seeing a honeybee has become sufficiently infrequent as to be a noteworthy sight. Late last summer as I entered a shop which had a flowering bush outside, I noticed what I at first thought were two honeybees. I quickly realized, however, that one of them was instead some sort of fly that mimicked the appearance of a honeybee. It hovered in a manner that honeybees don’t do and lacked the pollen sacs on its hind legs.

As I watched, the bee-mimicking fly dove at the real honeybee, striking it. The bee fell, convulsing, apparently dying as the fly hovered nearby. Horrified, I slapped at the fly, but of course there was nothing I could do for the bee.

My immediate impulse had been to protect the honeybee—who doesn’t love honey, after all?—but rationally, that predatory fly was just as much a part of nature’s web as the bee. Over the previous couple months I’d had no difficulty watching the spider outside the window by my seat at the coffee house capture flies and eat them. This, logically, was no different.

And yet it was.

I have to admit that I play favorites with nature. I love honeybees and butterflies. Parasitic wasps and carrion flies creep me out. I think a part of me could easily accept the loss of every mosquito on earth, or at least the sub-species of mosquitos that feed on mammalian blood and transmit diseases.

We need pollinators. Of course, several species of songbirds need mosquitos too, and I wouldn’t want to further stress them. As much as we’d like to, I don’t think it’s wise to pick individual winners and losers among insect species.

But yes. I love honeybees.

 

 

A few writing related news items to catch up on:

I had two poems published in “300 Days of Sun” the literary journal of the Nevada State College Humanities Department. The poems are “Super Nova” and “Gravity’s Embrace.” They’re in the lead position of the journal, pages one and two. Information about the journal is at https://300daysofsun.weebly.com/

Embark Literary Journal published the opening 4000 words of my novel, “The Great Disruption,” which I’m currently shopping around to agents. You can read the excerpt at https://embarkliteraryjournal.com/issues/issue-9-july-2019/

Here is the draft of the dust jacket blurb:

More than 99.99% of the population died in a plague. A chance viral mutation? A biological weapon? No one left alive knew for sure. But for a couple of years before the plague society was was increasingly torn apart by some mysterious pervasive illness that killed 80% of all boys before their first birthday, though girls were immune. Many suspected a rogue government actor was responsible.

Those who gathered to riot spread the plague and died. A few people hid from the rest of society and survived. Now they have to find each other and rebuild civilization.

Leaves of Ink published my poem, “It Could Have Been Beautiful.” It’s available online at http://www.leaves-of-ink.com/2019/09/it-could-have-been-beautiful.html

The Swimming Hole

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Photo SKSmith ©2006

In a flash fiction piece of mine due to be published soon, there’s a scene set in a place I visit occasionally, not far from my home. I bicycle there sometimes on mornings during good weather. It’s a little swimming hole in a local creek, and while the event I describe in the story is totally fictional, the place is real.

There’s a gravel bank by a bend in the creek, with plenty of flat stones perfect for skipping. Depending on how dry it’s been, the water gets deep enough that I can’t touch bottom for a small area. Maple and sycamore trees line the stream, but the gravel bank is bare of vegetation. I often see deer and herons around it, and a couple of times I’ve seen snapping turtles sunning themselves on the bank in the spring.

Most of the time when I go there in the morning I have the place to myself, but occasionally I’ve seen tents set up there. I just leave, trying not to disturb them in that case, if they haven’t seen me. Otherwise, I exchange a brief greeting before I go.

I went there again last Saturday morning, arriving about 10:00 AM. It was the first time I’d been there since last fall. When I pulled off the bike path there was a tree down over the trail to the swimming hole, but I was able to get around it. A little farther along there were another couple trees down, ones that appeared to have been cut with a chainsaw and felled beside each other in such a way that they would block the path. I parked my bike there and continued on foot, carrying the water shoes I’d brought with me. A little farther along another tree was down, cut the same way. They seemed to have been cut recently, probably only a few days ago.

The spot itself wasn’t disrupted, except for the remains of a campfire on the gravel bank. It was littered with beer bottles, potato chip bags, and the remains of firecrackers. The Fourth of July was only last week. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a campfire there, but this one was particularly messy.

The sky was clear, but the bank was shaded and the air relatively cool for early July. I was alone this time, and swimming alone is a remarkably bad idea. I waded some in the shallows, skipped stones, and generally relaxed for twenty minutes or so.

I think I’ve figured out why the trees were cut across the trail. I’ll bet the farmer that owns the bean field that flanks the trail got tired of people going back there to party, and worried that if one of them got hurt, he could be liable. The firecrackers probably pushed him over the edge.

If true, I can see his point, given today’s legal climate. Still, I think it’s a shame that all of those who had peacefully enjoyed that spot over the years are punished now for the inconsiderate behavior of a few. Ideally, people that take a woodland trail to a secluded spot should be responsible for their own safety, and be considerate of the land they use. Packing out their trash seems like the least they should do.

With everything dire and important happening in the world, it seems trivial to complain about this small restriction of my recreation. I suppose it is. Still, I’m reminded of the adage, “If everyone swept their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean.” Why is it so difficult to think about others, about how what you do affects your neighbors, or the planet as a whole?

I hope I don’t have to stop going to this place altogether, but I guess that’s a possibility I need to consider. I’ve enjoyed my visits to this little swimming hole over the years, and it provided a scene for a story of mine, after all. I’ll always have fond memories of it.

 

The flash piece, “Loops”  is due to be published in the Sept/Oct 2016 issue, of “Children, Churches, and Daddies” ( http://scars.tv/perl/ccd.htm ) See my piece “Night” in the current issue, June 2016.

“My” Pond

My Pond_1There’s a place I know near Black Hand Gorge, west of Nashport, Ohio. You pull off the road and into a parking lot by a public hunting area, walk down the path into the woods, take the first fork to the left to a little woodland pond surrounded by pine, maple, and oak trees. It’s a big enough pond that it has fish, though mostly the blue-gills there are small.

I’ve been going there now and then on sunny afternoons for nearly twenty years, when I could take an afternoon off. In the spring I see painted turtles and occasionally some snappers sunning themselves by the shore. There are beavers around, though the pond doesn’t seem to have been created by a beaver dam as far as I can see. There are patches of spring beauties and bluets carpeting the clearings around it in the spring, wild roses, queen anne’s lace, and daisies in the summer, and goldenrod in the fall. I’ve seen deer, squirrels, chipmunks, blue heron, red-tail hawks, ducks, bull frogs, and blacksnakes there, in addition to the beavers and turtles.

I’ve found this a relaxing place to read a book and to work on poetry. I have enough poems that I’ve written at that location over the years that I’ve visited it that I could put together a chapbook of them, if I chose. Some of those poems have already been published, or have had favorable responses at readings.

In the past, this spot has had more visitors than it seems to get now. This has good and bad aspects. While I enjoy the solitude when I go there, the trails around the pond are becoming more and more overgrown. I’m having to pull poison ivy from around the spot where I like to sit and read.

I suppose I’m trying to have it both ways. I want the solitude, but I want it to be free of poison ivy, and something to keep the mosquitoes down would be nice.

This is exactly what I fear will happen. It’s become a special place for me, one I’ve started to think of as “my” pond. If it became well known and popular, then before you know it the muddy trail leading to it would be paved with interpretive signs explaining the local features. A visitor’s center would pop up with concessions for ice-cream and sandwiches and souvenirs, and uniformed park rangers would guide groups of school children around on educational tours.

That’s why I’ve lied about the location of this pond at the start of this post. It’s actually in a different part of the state altogether.

Selfish of me…

 

(Thanks to Robert A. Heinlein)