A strange coolness hugged the evening ground after a week of near 100º temperatures. Fireflies hung suspended above the parched grass, glowing in surreal blinks, looking for a mate to celebrate the turn of good weather. After my throw, the yellow tennis ball rolled between two trees with Rudy hard on its path. In this [...]
A dirt dobber began commuting through our house a week or so ago on it’s way to work. I call her Dob (a tough name for a female, but she is an Apoidea, whatever that means). Dob’s day job is flying around collecting things. At night, she builds a dirt pipe organ out under the [...]
I have written about fire ants before. But things have changed in the South. Call it global warming. Call it a fire ant invasion. Call it an environmental rash, whatever. I have experienced fire ants up close all of my life. I have never seen anything like this.
With the recent news (from Michael Casey, Associated Press) that fireflies are disappearing from the earth – due to light pollution (too many lights), heavy pollution (too much industrial waste) and several other man-made alterations (environmental apathy, perhaps), it’s good to know that Ultimate Fighting is approaching mainstream popularity (according to brand guru, Rob Walker [...]
We’re all going to be living on bugs in a few years; you know that, don’t you? Roaches, scorpions, grubs, crickets, worms, crispy, crawly crunchies, they are the answer to the coming food shortage — and that shortage is coming. Read around, you’ll see. I’m trying to wrap my head around that insectful situation now.
I have a problem with the exact location of an imaginary, biological line that competes with the old geopolitical Mason Dixon Line.
The Gnat Line, as I have read about it and heard talk of, is the new demarcation boundary of the South as a region. Homogenization has smeared all kinds of lines from the past [...]
Grapevine, TX. Leroy, our shepherd/border collie best friend, was going crazy on the back patio. His intense barking dislodged in me the memory of a big, yellow cat that had stumbled over our stockade fence back in the winter. Leroy and the cat and me had tangled business ends during an extreme altercation. The cat [...]
I am itching as I type these words. If you have ever lived in the Deep South, you’ve seen more than your share of fire ants. One run-in with a few of the devilish little ankle biters and you’ll grasp the concept of the name quickly.