What Mysterious Webs We Weave

I marveled at this web I saw on my property in Virginia a few summers ago… 

What industry, and beauty…

It was a little hard to see - stepping back I took a picture of the place the spider chose to set up shop. 

On that same walk, I saw a pretty scary spider. Being a person who's spent most of her adult life living in cities, I usually just see - at best - the basic little old spider. This one is serious.

And I had the luck to catch her when she was carrying her precious eggs spun into the protective, waterproof, tight little ball that had to keep them as they grow and mature until they are born. This is the purpose of her life. To reproduce, and do all she can to secure that her species goes on… before she herself then dies.

Makes you want to go back and reread Charlottes Web.

That same trip I went to visit the UVA Campus and at the front steps I saw this phenomenon….

 Come October when you drag out the Halloween stuff to decorate, take these as your inspiration. It really does happen in Nature. I have never seen anything like this. Nature continues to awe and inspire.

I really have no idea what kind of insect has the ability or the need to create something like this. Is it cocooning gone wild? No spider would do this right? If it were a group of insects, like bees in a hive, I would understand the profound coverage of the webbing, but to my knowledge, I don't know any insect that can produce this to live in clusters or groups. 

Anyone out there have a clue?

How To Remove Ticks Easily

I have not personally tried this because I am not a tick magnet. But I know people who are. There is so much lyme disease going around that I'd think anything that might prevent that is worth passing on. I read of this method today so am posting it in case it can help. 

Apply a small amount of liquid soap on a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the cotton ball soaked with SOAP and blot it for 15-20 seconds. The tick will spontaneously detach and stick to cotton when you remove it.

Much less traumatic for the person who's got the tick in their skin or when the tick is places hard to reach with a tweezers, like your back. Apparently ticks will retract immediately which can be used on yourself, your kids or your dog.

If you see a ring in anywhere from 1-7 days, that looks like a bullseye, head to the doctor immediately. If caught in time, they can give you antibiotics to knock it out before anything more permanent takes hold. 

Trying Out New Wings

I live practically next to the Natural History Museum and there is an oddly cone shaped glass building attached that is covered in what looks like vines from the inside. After many moons walking past the thing, I learned it's a butterfly pavilion. Having never seen it before, I decided to visit when a girlfriend of mine was in town with her two kids.

There we saw a display area where we could observe

I should be using this post and the questions it brings up to research the answers and bring them to you. You'd think that I'd have the answers from whatever the plaques said at the museum, though I don't actually remember many of those. In case you don't check in on my other blog A New Yorker in Houston, you might not know that I've been kind of buried under the completion of something and have barely managed to get something up here. Posting Lite I could call it.

For now I will throw my questions out there, and in a few weeks when I have a life again, maybe they can be answered. Or maybe some of you can help. Here they are:

How do they know when to cocoon? And how is that made...they must make it themselves around them. And what is this incredible gold substance? They look like beads from an egyptian necklace.


And I was captivated by the shiny milky gorgeous emerald green ones. They remind me of those dished Martha Stewart has, lol. The row above them look like leaved and wilted leaves above those. I want to know what they all are.


How do those magnificent wings grow in such a small space? How long does it take? Does this happen only once a year, at the same time of year? And how long do butterflies live?


There were several types of butterflies that crawled from the cocoons above. I caught a little video of some of them trying out their wings. How gorgeous are the cobalt blue ones?


At some point, I imagine shortly thereafter, these are released into the pavilion where they literally dance in the air and flit from bowls of fruit to fragrant flowers to many a shiny green leaf. A pretty nice life, however long it is.

So if you know the answer or even a guess to any of these questions, or have some questions of your own, please let me know in the comments!

'Twas Nice to Know Ye, Opossums

After taking in row after row of baby opossums and a few adults this Spring at the rehab center, most of them have grown up and gotten fat and healthy enough to be released back into the wild. I have been taking very quick little video moments because there is too much work to do. But I've come to appreciate these animals through watching them and want not only to preserve those moments for myself, but to help others come to appreciate them too. I often go home and study whatever we've gotten in, looking them up in books and on Google.

To waive au revoir to a few... First off, a mama with her baby crawling. Notice Mom has her mouth open to show her many teeth, though she lies there motionless -- "playing opossum" -- while her baby, innocent to any converns about my presence, gleefully takes a crawl on the giant mountain called Mom. It's quick but good enough.



I know , a two second snippet, but you were warned, lol. The one below is longer and clearer to see. After cleaning a row of tanks of a bit older babies I put in their esbilac (puppy milk mixture) and cheerios so they can learn to lap and eventually eat on their own. These guys did a good job and were pretty darn cute in the process.


Now see, did you ever think of opossums as cute before? I know they still may not be someone's cup of tea.... But I have to say, if you spend some time observing an animal, let alone caring for it, you come to really see it's merits. Even if it's a spider -- CLICK HERE to visit my friend Bindu for a great proof of that (I do NOT like spiders, not at all, but her Ode to a Spider post made me see I could really appreciate them).

Reminds me of this quote:

"You can't hate someone whose story you know"

....applied to the animal kingdom of course. I googled like mad to find to whom I might attribute that quote to no avail.

As Spring turns to summer, different species complete their birth cycles. Babies who once dominated the center go out and entirely different baby animals arrive in need. I heard that this week we got in two bob cats and two fawns -- I saw a little Bambi come in, absolutely newborn with limp, long legs and an adorable little face, as someone carted her off in their arms to check all her vitals. I wish I wasn't so busy this week and going out of town next week, as those would be two really amazing babies to look after!!

Tan and A Looker

Who says you there's not something for everyone on this blog?

Oh, no one said that?

Well, insects really aren't my thing, but I've learned that, just like how in the dating world there's someone for everyone out there, there is a person for every species. If Tarantulas or snakes or alligators make your skin crawl, there are all kinds of folks who prefer them to the furry sweet faced kittens and puppies you adore. And I imagine that goes for insects as well...

I can't speak for the textbook definition of the hierarchical scale, but I kind of think of insects as being at the far edge --- I won't say the bottom, as who am I to judge. They are, after all, living things. They may be smaller than the smallest animals, but they certainly are way above plants, as living things go.

I dearly hope you're getting that this is all quite tongue in cheek. Any one of my zoo friends who actually went to school for all of this would be moaning at my botched attempt at humor and could probably set me straight in an instant.

I got an appreciation for grasshoppers when I was sitting in our rental car in the hills near Boulder, CO and noticed this fella sitting on the wiper, checking me out.


Being a former stylist, I admired his monochromatic theme. When I zoomed in with my HD camera, I saw that even his eyes matched the rest of him.

He looks like he's prehistoric, and like he's wearing a coat of armor. And he's damn big as grasshoppers go (at least where I grew up with them, which was in a suburb near Chicago). I thought for all those reasons, he was pretty cool.

I do wonder if he is something else, as he doesn't quite exhibit the big back legs that allow for the "hop" part.... They look more like wings, but maybe his back legs are hidden? I did some research but could not come up with anything definitive. CLICK HERE to see a bit of what I found.

But maybe if you're one of those people who loves insects, dear readers, you can set me straight on this one... Does anyone know what this elegant guy is?