Today we discuss . . . yep, you got it . . . bugs!
Some of my favorites: Here we have a box elder bug, an earwig, a grasshopper, a four-eyed spidery guy, and a praying mantis.
By far, my absolute favorite is the praying mantis–known sometimes as the most fearsome killer in the insect world. A black widow spider is scary, but it has to sit on its prey to kill it. A mantis can reach out and grab its lunch. And sometimes mantids even work together to bring down, say, a hummingbird! Each season we have lots of the little green guys in our yard, and they will even let me hand feed them.
Another favorite of mine is the Monarch butterfly. In my novel, No Tomorrows, one of the thematic elements is a Monarch. The main character, Annie, has a collection of Monarch pictures and nick-knacks because . . . oh, can’t tell you. You’ll have to read it!
Now, we’d like to hear about your favorite buggos. And why in the wide world are they your favorites? Do you ever include bugs in your writing?
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Bees for the delicious honey.
Yes! I should’ve included them in my favorites.
Thanks for stopping by into my world of bugs, Brenda, and have a great weekend.
Don’t have a favorite bug. Can’t think of any I’ve included in my writing, although there may have been a casual reference to one.
Not fond of things that can sting. Or spiders. But I try to leave them alone. Or just leave.
Hey Terry! I don’t really like the stingers, either. And spiders don’t live long around me, especially if they’re in my house.
In fact, true story: Just a couple of days ago, I saw a small, fat spider sitting on the carpet. I got a tissue and picked it up. 2 seconds after touching it, there were hundreds of baby spiders pouring over the tissue, running up my arm and dropping on the carpet. I guess they’d been riding on momma’s back. I grabbed the dustbuster laying right there and sucked them up forthwith.
Have a bugless day, my friend!
I agree with Brenda about bees. Did you know “Deborah” is bee in Hebrew?
Fascinating about prey mantises bringing down a hummingbird.
Insects make good similes/metaphors. In my WIP, the female billionaire villain says artists in Montana are as numerous and annoying as mosquitos.
Hi Debbie! Yes, I did know about “Deborah” meaning “bee”. In fact, my business logo is a honeybee, and I explain why on the front page of my website.
Thanks for buzzing in this morning!
I love praying mantids, ladybugs, and butterflies. In my medieval fantasy book, my main character can use magic. When he proposed to his future wife, he used a spell to bring a group of butterflies to her. (And I just looked up what to call a group of butterflies. It’s a kaleidoscope.)
Hi Michelle!
“Kaleidoscope” for a herd of butterflies is a new one for me. Your MC sounds like a romantic kinda guy.
We haven’t seen any mantids yet this year at our place. The weather has been wonky so far, colder and much windier than usual. I hope they show up soon.
Thanks for stopping by this morning, and have a great day… 🙂
My MC is both romantic and practical. His true love needed a little push to say “yes” because he was in line to be the next king, and she was resistant to the idea of being a queen.
After further perusing of the internet, I learned that a group of butterflies can also be called a flight, flutter, rabble, rainbow, shimmer, swarm or, wing.
Wonder if your MC could woo me with a whole swarm of mantids…? 🤣
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I was going to look up the collective noun for the praying mantis, but then realized, as soon as they congregate, they eat each other. I once bought a mantis egg case for my kids for homeschool. We watched for them to hatch every day. When we finally found the egg case (still in the jar), there were only a few mantids left. Little cannibals. 😖
I looked it up & didn’t find anything & came to the same conclusion. 🤔
Favorite bug: Honey Bee because of honey, but also tree pollination.
I once used Monarch butterflies and Viceroy butterflies in a short story for the theme of mimicry. They look very much alike, and they are both bitter to predators. Their mimicry is beneficial to both – Mullerian mimicry.
Have a great day, Deb Bee!
“Deb Bee” . . . hey, I like it, Steve!
Thanks for the lesson on mimicry. “Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and sharing common predators, have come to mimic each other’s honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit.” (Wikipedia)
I hadn’t heard that about Monarchs and Viceroys, and had to look up the Müllerian reference.
Have a great Friday, my friend!
Good morning, Deb! I would say, dragonflies, lady bugs, honey bees, and bumble bees are my favorite insects. I have a bumble bee in my latest mystery, Book Drop Dead, which Meg encounters while it’s being “stalked” by a little orphaned kitten.
Have a wonderful day!
Hi Dale! Dragonflies! Thanks for reminding me…we walk in the orchards every morning, with our dog, Hoka. And, when the dragonflies appear for the season, oftentimes we have one flying in front of us down the orchard row. He leads us along, then zooms up and goes behind us, then zooms in front of us again. It’s quite comical to watch them. And if Hoka sees one in our yard, she tries to catch them by jumping up. We think the dragonflies are teasing her, because they’ll zoom out of her way, then dive-bomb her again.
Who needs TV?
Have a good weekend!
I like watching dragonflies and water striders when I’m near ponds or lakes, Ladybugs are welcome in my garden. We used to live on the Monarch migration route and I would go outside one morning to see our two 60-ft tall pine trees quivering with the butterflies’ folded wings. I would sit and wait until the sun came up enough for them to open their wings and fan them dry. I never saw them arrive and never saw them leave, but I took lots of pictures of the ‘butterfly trees’ before they disappeared.
I think the only good spider is a dead, smashed, smeared spider. A park naturalist was giving a presentation to a group of Kindergarteners and was distracted when she told them that they sometimes found hummingbirds caught in spider webs and had to “pull their legs off.” It wasn’t until she saw the horrified faces of the little children that she realized what she’d said. It took some fast talking to explain that she meant they had to pull the webs off the birds’ legs to save them. 😅
Good morning, Becky! The Monarch migration must’ve been a sight to behold indeed. I used to live S. CA, in Santa Ana for a short time, and we were in the flight path of the parrot migration. That was cool!
Your story of the park naturalist is a hoot. Goes to show how literal the wee folks are!
Have a great day…
I don’t recall having any bugs in my stories. Can’t say the same for my software. 🙂
I would choose the lightning bug as my favorite. Good memories of running in the yard with my cousins chasing lightning bugs on summer evenings.
I hear ya about the buggy software, Kay. I’ve been wrangling with website issues for a couple of months.
I’ve never lived in an area with lightning bugs. Kinda wish I had.
Have a great weekend!
Look into the eyes of a mantis as it studies you and decides whether you are worth killing, and you will know what it’s like to look into the eyes of a serial killer.
Yeah, Marilyn, when I have one in my hand and it starts walking up my arm with eyes fixed on my face, it gives me the distinct feeling I’m being sized up for his dinner plate. Glad their mouths are so small . . .
Have a great weekend!
One of the prettiest sights I ever saw was a field of wild purple asters with Monarchs on each one. Unforgettable.
Also like Daddy Longlegs.
Hi Elaine!
Hope you got a picture of that field! Sounds magnificent…
Have a great weekend! 🙂
We lived outside Cleveland, OH, for a few years, and the migratory path of Monarch butterflies goes through that area. One year all the trees and bushes close to Lake Erie were covered with butterflies. I had never seen anything like it. It was magnificent.
Wow! Sounds awesome, Kay. Once last year, we came home to find dozens of tiny tan mantids sitting on our house siding…which is tan also. They’d just crawled out of their pods, I guess. That was a cool sight.
Do you ever include bugs in your writing?
Yes, but only once, if I recall rightly. Horus Blassingame has been awake for too long on the train to Deres-Thorm:
When I presented my passport and visa to the desk clerk, he studied them at length. I felt a strong urge to close my weary eyes, drop my head to the counter, and rest. I did not, of course. The clerk would surely have thought me unrefined or, perhaps, a bit barmy.
As I stood there, waiting patiently, a small black spider plopped from the chandelier overhead onto the open ledger. I imagined for a moment that I had dreamt this.
The clerk put down my papers, and, squashing the spider with a fingertip, referred to the ledger. After a long pause, he stared at me over his spectacles.
“You have reserwation, Zemor . . . ” He glanced over at the visa. “ . . . Zemor Blessisname?”
The spider echoes the Kafkaesque world that Horus has entered.
Hey, JG! Great spider story…I’ll have to figure out how to use one in my next WIP.
Thanks dropping in, you and the arachnid of choice.
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