Delight

Okay, maybe this title would better serve a more agreeable experience, but hey--life's short, and there are many words.

Yesterday, upon opening my car door at the end of a work day, I noticed a tiny spider suspended in the center of the space in which I would be sitting. I gently sweeped my finger several inches above the spider to pick up it's silk and transfer it to a large tree that was closeby.

It's probably worth mentioning at this point that I'm generally comfortable around insects, at least until they are found crawling on me without my permission. (And I'm wary around stinging insects because I'm very allergic.)

As I watched the spider land on the tree, I noticed how the tree's bark was so perfectly, randomly segmented into a beautiful mosaic of puff-pastry-like layers of variegated browns and mottled, lichen greens. The trunk of the tree too large to close my arms around.

Just as I was turning away, I sensed movement on the bark. Upon closer inspection, a piece of bark was moving as if something were beneath it. Nay, it a piece of bark with legs!

I picked up some loose bark on the ground to urge it into a little bag I had to take it home and
investigate.

Delight? Sure! I'd never seen or heard of an insect like it! And I'm always amazed by nature's ingenuity, and this was definitely an example! Just the night before, I saw a television program
about animals that drastically transformed themselves through their lifecycle. This insect turned out to be a brown lacewing larvae; a.k.a. "Aphid Wolf", due to its beneficially carnivorous
nature, and "Trash Bug", due to its practice of attaching debris to its back, including carcasses of insect victims, to protect it from larger predators.

I set it loose among my plants because it will find food there until it makes a cocoon, and maybe I will see an adult lacewing someday.