Tag Archives: small

Some Small Critters

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I have been looking small lately. It is easy to look big, to see the bright sunset, or the glowing sunrise, or the mountains as they wear a cloak of clouds. For the small, you have to pay more attention. The newt that crosses your path? If you don’t look down, you will miss it.

Or you will miss all of them. My beautiful spouse and I took a long walk in the woods the other day. We saw more newts than we could count. I hope I didn’t step on any. They are orange but still, they were easy to miss.

And check out this caterpillar. It is munching on bedstraw (an invasive, by the way–beautiful but aggressive). I had seen one of these caterpillars last year in just about the same spot, but that one was black. It looked like the same pattern but could there be that much variation in color? Yes, apparently. Black? Pink? Fashionable moths. It’s name? Bedstraw Hawkmoth. Appropriate.

Speaking of moths, here is another one. This little dude was attached to the screen door in the morning. It is only an inch and change long, pink and yellow and trying to blend in. It chose a poor location to blend in. I have no idea what its caterpillar form looks like–smaller still I imagine. This one is called Rose Hooktip. Those moth namers call it like it is with the straightforward names.

Or do they? We were pretty excited to find this Luna Moth a couple of days ago. It showed up in the morning, clung to its post for most of the day and disappeared in the afternoon. It repeated that performance the next day, one post over. This critter was much bigger that the hooktip. And, I mean, look at that thing! So beautiful and so fragile. It is confident enough, or carefree enough, or self-assured enough that it just doesn’t worry that that Phoebe with the nest right above it is going to make lunch out of it. Actually, maybe that is what happened to it.

As for that Phoebe? I kept seeing it near the porch, so I looked around. On the underside of the back side of the eave of the roof I found its nest. It was the perfect spot for it. If I hadn’t looked I would never have seen it. That is the theme here–looking. I am trying to look closely–at the newt, the moth, the nest, even at the plant where the caterpillar has breakfast or the moss next to the newt. It take deliberateness to see small.

I still am awed by the full moon or the sparkling lake or the field of wildflowers–the big–but I want to be sure to also get down and look closely at those flowers. Only then will I see the cool zigzag spiderweb that stretches between the stems. And damn those are cool. Seriously. Seeing those webs is worth getting dew on your pants. If you want to be dazzled, looking small is just as good as seeing big.

Looking Closely

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Down the road the other day, walking, I looked down. Bright green, moving. I knelt. I found a caterpillar. It waved its way across the gravel. It seemed a tough environment for a caterpillar–soft and squishy on hard and rough. I found a dried leaf. I held it in front of the caterpillar. It climbed aboard. I carried it to the other side of the road.

I kept looking down. There was a mottled leaf, still green but dried in spots. Why was it like that? It looked burned. I admired it. I left it where it had fallen.

And now I was looking closely at small things. I noticed the seeds of the grass backlit by sun. I noticed all the tiny yellow flowers of the Goldenrod, green and brown that look like one big cluster of gold. I noticed the mud. In the sun the mud was almost dry, hardened into deer tracks. In the shade, tire tracks firmed up, damp. In the deep shade, goo and puddles.

And more flowers–Chickory and Asters. Several kinds of asters–pink and light purple and the purple of almost night. One Aster matched the color of the sky as the sun sank low. Monarch Butterflies found the flowers. They like the Asters the best. Moths flitted. I watched a mosquito on my shoulder.

Then I looked up enough to walk back home. A breeze picked up. Some sparrows peeped in the brush. A car passed and raised a cloud of dust. Then it was quiet again. Buttercups bobbed. A goose honked its way south. And then I was back, and as I wrapped myself n the world of my house, those small things of the world sank back into the afternoon.