Wednesday, September 13, 2006

One For The Bugs!

I imagine that not many of you will be insect fans. I imagine virtually none of you will be fans of spiders. Therefore I don't exactly expect an outpouring of grief over the unfortunate arachnid that I inadvertantly crushed to death the other morning. I had awoken as usual, groggy and in the foulest of foul moods at having to arise at 7.30 am. I adjourned to the rain room for half an hour to make myself feel better as much as to clean my rotting corpse. On returning to my bedroom to get dressed I noticed what looked like crumbs lying on my unmade bed. Closer inspection revealed that it hadn't been the residue of whatever I was eating in bed the night before (honest, I don't make a habit of it!), but the remains of a spider. It's legs were everywhere, what I took to be the body was all shrivelled. I then noticed a small purplish stain on the bedsheet. Let's just say that this had obviously been a bit of a gruesome death. Insect Horror Movie stuff. I removed the bed sheet for washing and disposed of the remains. I think the poor blighter would rather have been stamped on to be honest.

Living in an old tenement you get plenty of these fellows floating around. I'm just glad it was a standard issue house spider. If I'd rolled over on the enormous fat fucker that's been prowling our house for the past month I reckon i'd have felt it under me.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Anyway, I don't mind insects. Ladybirds are awesome. They are especially impressive when they open their shells and fly off. They look enormous when airborne.

Bumble bee's are also high up on my list. It's the tiny little wings and huge hairy bodies that get me. I think I read somewhere that thet defy physics when they fly. It would seem that this is scientific urban myth. Their wings rotate not unlike helicopter blades, so they don't 'fly' in conventional terms, they hover. This makes sense when you watch them up close.

Gratuitous Al-Fresco Ladybird Porn.

7 comments:

Lorna said...

Gratuitous Al-Fresco Ladybird Porn; without a doubt my favourite photo title for some time!

iLL Man said...

Cheers Lorna. I suppose could have called it "Two Ladybirds Fucking", which of course is very much the case............

May their offspring be many........

These and the following post are sort of inspired by your lovely garden shots from a while back as well as the excellent close up shots Alan posts from time to time at 'This Moment'.

They are also inspired by the fact that I only recently discovered that my camera has a macro mode..........

alan said...

why, thank you :)

btw i hope there was no suggestion of gratuitous arachnid-human porn taking place in your bedroom? accidents can happen when the passions are aroused.

iLL Man said...

Alan! Behave yourself...............

;D

Larry Teabag said...

On the bumblebee thing, see "The flight of the bumblebee and related myths of entomological engineering" American Scientist 77:164-169, 1989.

Or: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/journals/aero/wellman/bumblebee.html

Shorter version: they can fly.

Larry Teabag said...

I just notice that the link I gave is written by someone called Well Man.

iLL Man said...

Not exactly sure what most of that meant, but I get the gist. Does that mean the hovering stuff is a load of crap?

Does it matter?

I'm sure someone replied to a post of mine once as 'Well Man". I could be going senile though.

Oh good!