Nature is Fabulous Until…
The pool at sunset.
Nature has been fabulous lately . . . depending on where you live, but I live at Darwin’s View and here the weather has provided a little bit for everyone: hot and cold, wet and dry, no wind (which means black flies) and a strong breeze according to the Beaufort Wind Scale (35 mph, thus no Black flies.) In short, it’s springtime in New Hampshire.
The animals are enjoying the weather, too. A herd of gentle, brown-eyed deer in the field (thankfully not in the orchard). Tom Turkeys dancing for their hens, who gossip amongst themselves while judging the males’ pirouettes. And, of course, our hens. Not so wild but still a part of nature given they are relatively feral because I respect their personal space. Which is a problem when trying to get them to a safe place and they mistakenly calculate that they are safer on the wrong side of the fence than near me.
I will note that nature is fabulous until ants invade the house and Carl finds a toe-biting beetle swimming in the pool. Then nature takes on a darker, less appealing tone. This day has been one of those days.
The ants, for instance, have been present in the greenhouse for a while now. I didn’t take much notice of them as their small villages slowly turned into towns. When they climbed onto the citrus trees, we hoped their intention was to eat the scale on those lemon and lime and orange flora. But when we moved all the plants out of the greenhouse for summer, as we did this past week, overnight those ant towns revealed themselves as one giant metropolis. And, without the scale’s sugary substance to attract the ants to the trees, the ants had to go exploring. All the way up to my office. Into our bathroom. And I wondered just how far under the house the colony had moved.
After much reading, I confess that organic, “live and let live” wouldn’t do. We bought ant killer goo. It’s so human, isn’t it? As soon as things get awry, bring out the big guns. Poor ants. I tend to anthropomorphize and felt ill, thinking of what the goo was doing to them.
Until they sprouted wings. Which happened this morning. I went out to the greenhouse to clean the kitty litter—always a joy—and noted a swarm of winged ants. Everywhere. I’m sorry. I vacuumed them up.
Having destroyed all the ants’ condos and skyscrapers, I left the scurrying, hard working creatures to rebuild until they ate their sweetened borax, and I headed outside to help Carl clean the pool of the string algae that had accumulated.
He announced that he had discovered a Giant toe-biting Water Bug. In the pool. Kafka’s Gregor Samsa of “The Metamorphosis” came to my mind. Worse still, Carl’s bug had scurried away into the pool’s sandbag stairs. As we glided the nets back and forth, occasionally upsetting one of the cute frogs who had taken up habitation, I kept an eye peeled, wondered if Water Bugs eat frogs, and if I would ever swim in our fresh-water swimming pond again.
Scary stuff Giant toe-biting Water Bugs. Carl had read that the bite is excruciating, but not poisonous.
Now then. I have been taking daily dips into that pond for the past month or so. The temperature has been between 40-64 degrees Fahrenheit and is perfect for a bracing, invigorating, rapid-entry and even-more-rapid exit. But if there’s a Giant toe-biting Water Bug in that water, those dips are no more.
Which is why Carl is my hero. While I retreated into the house to hang laundry—it being a sunny day and so lots of power to take advantage of—Carl caught that bug and put it into a bucket. Badabing!
The giant water scavenger beetle captured!
We stared into the bucket.
The good news is that the Water Bug wasn’t a toe-biter. It’s a giant water scavenger beetle. Hydrophilus triangularis for all you Latin scholars out there. They are found throughout the United States, are not invasive, eat mosquito larvae, and do not create imbalance in aquatic systems. It could just as easily have moved into the swamp down the road, so that’s where it went. I hope it is enjoying its new home and try not to think it might be lonely or scared.
The possible missed opportunity? As I looked closer into the bucket, I noted what I hoped were Daphnia a.k.a. water fleas or, more correctly, small crustaceans.
These little microscopic creatures eat algae and keep the pond water clear. We have been meaning to go out at night and shine a light to see if we have any. I can attest that, if the numbers in that bucket are any indication, we have loads. Tiny piranha-looking bugs. And itty, bitty, squiggling worms that we have since found out are mosquito larvae, larvae that would have been eaten by that giant water scavenger beetle. Which means that maybe the beetle had moved here as a gift from nature. And we, humans that we are, had looked that gift in the mouth.
Sometimes it is best not to look back.
I went for a dip in the pool this morning and was greeted by yet another species of underwater beetle. It floated near the third step down. It had no fear. It refused to budge when I stepped down one, two steps, and so I took a moment to scream and leap out. Then bravely, bravely I sallied in, creating as much turbulence as I could in hopes of not being attacked.
Which reminds me. I have to tell Carl we have another bug in the pond.