Insects, Bugs, Rocks 'n' Holes

When Charles Darwin first released his book, The Origin of Species, he thought that the church would be up in arms against his theory of evolution. But the church (Anglican, not Papal) were not so much bothered by the thought of evolution - some even agreed with him. What the church couldn't get its head round was that life for animals was so short, cold and brutal. They had bought into the idea of the hymn, All Things Bright And Beautiful and couldn't accept that God would create lives for animals in such a way, even though, in Victorian Britain, the average working class life was no better!

If you were to take an acre of land anywhere except the poles you would be shocked to find how much insect life there was contained there. To the insects, an acre of land is a whole world, where, just like our world, there are wars, murders, sex and pain each and every second of every day. And just like our world, there are many diversities.

I'm telling you this because my beautiful little granddaughter, Harleigh, has developed a fear of everything that crawls. She was once so brave and fearless, but unfortunately when it comes to insect life and being confronted with it, her mother, Kim, is a screamer. This, of course, has been experienced by Harleigh, who has now developed her mother's fears.

So when she stayed with us this week, I decided to show her that, here in Britain, most of our insects are quite harmless to us butch human types. We have wasps, bees and hornets, horse-flies, and (I think) about six spiders that can hurt us slightly. I have been on the receiving end of all these, except the spiders. I'm yet to find one that can bite. Although, this week, my first demonstration to Harleigh to show her how harmless a spider is went terribly wrong. I found quite a large spider curled up in the corner of our living room and tried to pick it up. As my big fat fingers approached the poor creature it jumped at me and somehow grabbed my wrist. It didn't bite me, as I felt no pain whatsoever, but it was hanging from my wrist somehow! This of course freaked little Harleigh out, and she retreated behind my wife for safety. She couldn't have found a worse place to hide from a spider, as my wife also has an irrational fear of them.

I have been bitten and stung by many things in my time. I have even been bitten by quite a few humans, but I won't go into that just now. My generation as children would go hunting poor hapless creatures and bring them home. I was a nightmare for my parents, as our shed was always full of snakes, frogs, newts, mice, tortoises, hedgehogs and any other poor creature I could buy or catch. Many of them escaped, only to find their way into our house, which then usually caused chaos as they jumped, scurried or slithered their way around. But now it seems that young people are quite terrified of most animals and insects, with the exception of dogs, cats, or anything cute and fluffy. I know that my wife has an irrational fear of moths but she, too, as a child, was kept away from nature.

When we were first married, my wife had gone to bed early and I was sitting downstairs watching TV, when I heard the mother of all screams, coming from my wife upstairs. I quickly ran upstairs fearing the worst, thinking a burglar had broken in, or my wife had had a bad fall. How wrong I was! When I reached the bedroom that my wife was in, I found her sitting on the bed with her nightie tucked firmly between her legs and her hands over her head. I looked around the room for any danger and couldn't for the life of me see any. I asked her what the problem was and she replied in a semi- coherent babble, “It's dive-bombing me!” I again looked around the room and couldn't see anything. Fearing that I had unwittingly married someone with severe mental health issues (I had!) I asked in a calm and reassuring voice, “What is it that's dive-bombing you, love?” thinking that her mind had completely gone and she would reply with something like, 'The dragon".  She then turned and with a look of terror in her eyes she replied, “That moth!”

All though I love looking at insects I am glad that they are not as big as humans, because we would be either very few in number or very scared, as the insect world is very much kill or be killed. All the records for everything relative to size goes to insects. They are the fastest, strongest, jump the highest, longest, everything-est! We wouldn't last long against any of them, especially the ants. They have to be the most scary and interesting of all creatures on earth. They are relentless, clever and powerful. It is well documented that we humans are making quite a mess of this beautiful planet of ours, but if the ants were in charge, trust me it would be an ant-shaped world. Everything would be altered to suit them. I suppose they aren't much different to us in that way.

When it comes to loving, the creature who holds the record for love making is not an insect, but a most unlikely candidate, the leopard slug. They copulate for up to twenty four hours. I think they slip a bit of Barry White on the old slug deck, turn the leaf down low, and slither and slide in a balletic dance of love. Now that's what you call a love-a-thon!

For me, the most humorous and the most unfortunate of insects has to be the dung beetle. I think the clue is in its title why its the most unfortunate of creatures. But if you have ever seen one of these creatures, with its herculean strength, rolling a massive ball of dung over any obstacle, only to lose it over the end of a cliff, you would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for the poor beast but also not to laugh! It does remind me of the awful TV programme we had here in Europe in the seventies called , It's a Knockout. One of the hosts of this show also turned out to be a piece of dung! He has been convicted of paedophilia.

I'm now going to religiously show Harleigh all the forms of insect life that I can find in the garden and in the wood in which we live. The more she becomes accustomed to insects now, the more she will both love and appreciate just how wonderful and diverse our planet is when she gets older. And who knows, when in the future if she decides to have children, and one screams at the sight of a spider in the bath tub, she will calmly bend down and pick it up and turn to her child and say, “You know what my Babo told me about spiders when I was a little girl...?”