Love nature

A Bug in he Sun Earl Plato

A bug in the sun. A flat bug. A brownish bug. A longlegged bug. All the above were answers I once received from the Bert Miller Junior Naturalists. What did we have? A squash bug soaking up September’s morning rays after the chill of the night. We stood at Paonessa’s farm in Ridgeway on a Saturday looking down at it. We share the warmth together. The sunshine, the fresh air, the green of still growing plants are its, the squash bug’s, as well as ours. The world was made for it- and for our farm chipmunks, the purple martins there and the water striders in the pond - as well as for us. We share it all in common. Oh, that we could live more in harmony with nature. But in this real world lack of harmony seems to rule so often. Continue to seek for those instances that reflect the beauty of creation. ***
Four year old Ashlyn Kells is a curious girl. At Old Fort Erie during a recent Saturday night Christian Rock Concert she was looking around for something in nature. She found it. She called us to show us her find.
There grasping to the trunk of a white ash tree was a beetle-like insect. I knew what it was, I thought. However, its back had two eye-like spots. I carefully picked it up. It had its feet firmly attached to the tree’s bark and I gently pried it off for Ashlyn and the other children to see. There were the translucent wings. “Cicada” we pronounce it “sick-AH-dah.” This particular sucking bug was a Dog Day cicada (Tibicen canicularis). Remember “dog days” in August are associated with heat. That’s the time cicadas high up in our trees vibrate an organism in their abdomen. That’s what I describe as a “prolonged whining buzz.” Yes, it’s a mating call. This poor fellow Ashlyn had found was out of synch. First of all he should have been up higher and secondly difficult to find. Not this bug but we wish him well as we placed him back on the tree trunk. Be curious in nature.