Pill Bug

Pill Bug Earl Plato
Six year old grand daughter Ashlyn Kells is fascinated with bugs. I found her this past Saturday digging bare handed in her back yard. She was looking for bugs in the dark, rich earth and she found one. It was a dark little pill bug. I like bugs too. The pile of old and decaying cut wood just east of the Marcy cabin is gone. It was on the surface of one log that a bug was moving. It was a pill bug. It is a small and primitive creature. Ed Teale, naturalist called it , “ a terrestrial isopod crustracean..” Looking at it it suggests a prehistoric trilobite in miniature. On this May day at Marcy Woods Ashlyn and I are looking for a pill bug in a mouldering pile of logs on the Lower Trail. No luck today. The name pill bug comes from its ability to roll its brownish-gray body into a round pill-like ball. The internet tells us that it resembles an armadillo in its curling up in a ball. I learned that its scientific name of the pill bug’s family is Armadillidae! I remember seeing a white spot on that old log near the cabin. Fellow naturalist, Ernie Giles, said that it was chitin from the pill bug that had just emerged. It was the almost translucent shell of the insect. This outer coating is the exoskeleton that takes the place of the internal framework in mammals. The sequence on that May day long ago was that the pill bug free of its old covering saw its new chitin rapidly hardening. It moved slowly across the log. Look for bugs on your walks. Ashlyn and I will too.
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I read it again. It made sense. Here it is. “Perspective colours our lives as much, if not more than other fundamentals. Keep the same old perspective and our lives devolve to a gray routine. Change our perspective and our lives take on new colour and excitement.” Do you know what I mean? Especially us seniors! Almost all of my life I have done bird watching from the ground. I gained a new perspective. High up in the canopy of white pines on Our Walk in the Clouds in Haliburton we looked down into a Red-eyed vireo nest. Down from 50 feet in the air! A new and thrilling perspective? I guess so. Don’t get me wrong I will not be climbing too many trees for these unique views of bird nests. However, I can suggest a new setting just for sighting birds that I experienced years ago. In he east side of Wainfleet Marsh at the north end of Biederman Road is a deer run. Every so often there are hunter platforms used during deer hunting season. This was spring and I climbed up to one platform and there nestled among the row of alders came the songs of birds. There just a short distance away, 20 feet above the ground, was a RED EYED VIREO looking me in the eye. Try something different in nature this year. Have a different perspective. Who knows what new outlooks you will experience. Try a new perspective in your nature endeavours.