Me (back from a walk in the forest): I’m back.
Wife: Did you put on insect repellent before you went out?
Me: That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?

Need a Tour primer? I drew one of those, too.

Upon spying a 2 cm tuft of red fur crawling through the grass, the following thoughts crossed my mind:

1) I wish I had my camera.
2) What IS that thing?
3) Bright colors. Hmm… Probably shouldn’t touch it.

While observing it, the tuft started burrowing into the lawn. Fortunately, it being Southern California with watering restrictions being imposed by the city since last summer (one good thing about droughts, I guess), the ground was quite solid, and resisted its efforts. This afforded me the opportunity to go grab my camera.

When I returned, the red tuft had not made any progress. Unfortunately, burrowing into a lawn does not a good photograph make. Obviously, the next step was to coax the little red tuft to higher ground. Recalling thought #3, I found a small stick and started prodding at the red tuft. Prodding the abdomen did nothing for me — it tried even harder to burrow into the lawn. So I moved the stick to where I estimated its head to be and started poking away. This seemed to irritate the red tuft to no end. It started the insect equivalent of screaming at me — rubbing two abdominal plates together that let off a high pitched shrill. My perseverance was finally rewarded when the little red tuft backed out of its much-too-shallow burrow and started crawling across the lawn to get away from me.

I put down the stick and madly worked the focus ring of the camera while trying to get in front of the remarkably-quick-for-its-size red tuft. After many tens of photos, and an incursion far deeper into my neighbor’s yard than I intended, I withdrew from the red tuft and let it go on its way.

Back inside the house, after deleting the out-of-focus images (read: most of them), the hunt was on again. This time to answer thought #2. Bugguide.net informs me that the red tuft is a velvet ant — genus Dasymutilla — though I’m not able to guess a species based on the photos in their database. The thing is, it’s not actually an ant. It’s a wasp. The wingless ones, like the one I was pestering in the lawn, are the females (my Star Trek-inspired excuse for keeping the picture even though she’s in soft focus. Plus, you know, red shirt.). They crawl around looking for ground-dwelling bees’ nests or other wasp’s nests in which to lay their eggs. The velvet ant larvae either feed on the hosts, or the food stockpiles of the hosts.

All very interesting, but that’s not what gave me pause. What gave me pause was the other common name for the velvet ant — cow killer. It gets this name from its ability to inflict a sting so sever it is said to be able to kill a cow.

Kill.

A cow.

Sure, it’s most likely hyperbole (not willing to test that theory myself, thank you), but still. This is probably not an insect you should be handling (kudos to me for thought #3!), or pissing off by prodding it with a stick (um…), then getting nose-close to, to take macro photos of.

… Yeah.

The other night, I happened to glance up at the night sky and saw a bright light to the east.

“I bet that’s Jupiter or Saturn,” I thought to myself, so I went inside and grabbed my old, trusty binoculars and had a look. Sure enough, the bright light resolved itself into a larger bright light, with four smaller lights surrounding it — Jupiter.

And that’s when the astronomy bug bit me again.

Perhaps “bit” is the wrong word. It’s more like the varicella-zoster virus. The first infection is the worst, and you end up with chickenpox. In the case of astronomy, you go out and buy yourself the best telescope you can afford (mine was a Meade ETX-90 — the one before computer tracking became dirt cheap to put on mounts). For those who aren’t consumed by the infection, the virus eventually goes into remission and the telescope collects dust in the corner, or you dontate it to a school or sell it (mine went to a high school with an astronomy club).

Unfortunately, remission does not mean cure. Later in life the virus can reassert itself. Glancing at Jupiter that fateful night was the trigger. And like varicella-zoster asserting itself as shingles, I find myself thinking about good telescopes for sidewalk astronomy — something easily pulled out on a whim to look at the night sky, streetlights be damned.

And like shingles, this too shall pass. I just have to bear with the metaphorical itching, and try to remind myself of all the bad things about astronomy. The late nights. The bugs. The lack of dark skies where I live. Meanwhile, I will take the occasional through-the-eyepiece picture of the moon with my digital camera and binoculars, and read up on the latest and greatest telescopes for sale.

… and a girl and a boy and a girl and another girl and another boy and …

The late night snack pictured here is either genus Phyllophaga — in which case it really is a june bug, and I’ve been calling them by their proper common name — or it’s genus Cyclocephala — and it’s really a masked chafer.

Either way, I’m happy to see it in the spider’s web as opposed to in the house, dive bombing the nearest light fixture.

I’m also happy with the way the picture turned out. Flash with auto focus through a window.

I am torn. “Crane fly” just does not hold the mystique that “mosquito hawk” does. When you associate “crane fly” — or its oft used misnomer “daddy long legs” — with this insect, you think to yourself, “of course. Long legs. I get it,” and you leave it at that.

But when you associate “mosquito hawk” with this insect, you imagine it patrolling the skies, looking down for unsuspecting prey, then swooping down and devouring mosquitos in midair. These insects are helping control the population of pests. They’re helping control the spread malaria and West Nile virus! They’re the unsung heroes of the insect world! There’s mystique! There’s romance!

Then you see one fly.

Then you do your research.

Then you sigh, slump in your chair, and start referring to them, correctly, as crane flies and lament the loss of innocence that allowed you to think of them as mosquito hawks.

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

–William Blake
“The Tiger”

Once upon a time, a barn swallow had the not-so-great idea of building its nest in the entryway of a house in suburbia instead of one of the more traditional locations — such as a barn or freeway overpass.

“Think of it,” this swallow must have thought, “it’s quiet, safe from predators, and with the housing market as it is, there should be plenty of real estate to choose from! The only downside would seem to be the commute.”

So, with the help of its mate, the swallow tried it out and found that the positives did not outweigh the negatives. Because of the long commute, gathering building material was more difficult. Plus those pesky humans kept knocking down its nest. Not to mention the extra time it took to go grocery shopping. “What was I thinking?” the swallow surely muttered to itself as it moved back to the country, where dinner for a hungry brood could be found right outside its door.

Sadly, like a bad Internet meme, the idea took root, and every year, more and more barn swallows are trying to build homes in the ‘burbs.