Okay, this is a warning. I am going to sound a little "Woo-woo" in this post. I can't help that because sometimes that's just how I am.
So, with the appropriate warning out of the way, I have to confess that sometimes it seems as if certain animals consent to show themselves to me so that I can photograph them. How else to explain the chance to photograph the fly attacking the hornworm last week?
Or the funnel spider that sat at the entrance to its hole and just looked at me one morning last summer? That's very unusual behavior for a funnel spider.
How about last week, when the scissor grinder cicada (
Tibicen pruinosus) flew to the stem of a sunflower, about 5 feet from where I was weeding in the vegetable garden, and started to loudly sing away, making sure I had the chance to put his song and his appearance together.
He even sat there singing while I stood up and photographed him!
Then there was the hanging thief robber fly (
Diogmites sp.) that landed right in front of me to munch away on her wasp victim, while she dangled nonchalently from a single foot hanging onto the dry tip of an aster leaf.
Look how gently she seems to be cradling her prey.
I shouldn't forget the beautiful (and BIG) garter snake that posed prettily on the back path earlier this summer, obviously replete from a satisfying meal of (probably) cotton rat or baby rabbit.
I walk the paths with 2 large German shepherds and I make little or no attempt to be quiet or to keep the dogs on heel. That snake HAD to know we were coming!
Don't get me wrong - I am definitely not complaining. I absolutely love
getting glimpses into the lives of the animals that share our "little bit of Earth" with us. It's a privilege and an honor to share their
stories with a wider audience, too.
I'll leave you with one last animal story I was privileged to witness recently and with the related thought that it sparked in me.
I saw this David and Goliath story in my front garden just last week. How in the world did that little crab spider manage to catch - and especially hold onto - that huge swallowtail butterfly? The butterfly was obviously old - it's tattered wings hint of multiple adventures survived. Was the butterfly just too old to have the energy to get away this time? Or did it, somehow, know that its time was done and "consent" to become a meal for the little spider, passing along its energy to help the wheel of life spin just a little bit further around?
Do animals
"consent" to be eaten and to become part of the food chain? I've read
that the Native Americans always used to say thanks to the animals they
hunted for giving their lives to them for sustenance. Was that a
willing choice on the part of the animals? Or was that simply an acknowledgement, on the part of the Native Americans, that they were taking the lives of other animals to support their own?
Of course I have no answers to my questions and I know that I'm being fanciful, especially in imagining the animals' desire to have their stories shared on the internet, but thanks for reading this and letting me indulge in whimsy from time to time. I hope you'll always share the chance encounters you have with wildlife in your gardens - and the stories behind those encounters, too!
