tollipop

a little excitement down on the colony

Things happen quickly in the insect world, dear reader.  You have to be ready, you can't be asleep at the wheel.  The pendulum swings without a moment's notice, making it nearly impossible to stay abreast of the action...yet I shall try my hardest to keep you with me, finger on the pulse, riding the storm of beetle-keeping together.

It all started yesterday when Izzy called my attention to the fact Tin Lizzie (our female scarab and the most robust of the three) had surfaced and was tootling around the habitat.  I was excited to see her, but noticed almost immediately she seemed rather agitated and when she stood on her hind legs, her undercarriage was covered with tiny little pods.  

What do I know about such things?  Not much.  But I guessed they were parasites.   

I emailed my insect supplier, cringing to yet again be troubling him for information.  He confirmed my worst fear, that the pods were indeed mites, and that they could be suffocating my beetle by covering the air passages of her under thorax.  He also explained I could sweep the mites away using an art brush, with the caveat perhaps it wasn't worth doing so if she had resubmerged, thus entailing the risk of disrupting the substrate (and potential egg/larvae situation) if I had to excavate to find her. 

Are you with me so far?  Good.

Is your pulse racing?  Mine, too.

This was late at night, by the way, so I didn't dare follow up his response with a new barrage of questions. One wonders about the etiquette of such situations, but I had the sneaking suspicion my need to know did not trump his need to sleep.  

Did I sleep a wink?  Hardly.  I tossed and turned, determining the very next day I would rectify the situation one way or another.

Unfortunately for Tin Lizzie, I had to attend church in the morning.  I had to, dear reader.  I happen to be the organist and failing to show for services would result in an entire congregation being forced to sing a cappella, the strains of worship rendered to such unholy discord it could rattle even the most pious at heart.

Upon returning home, the first thing Izzy said as we came through the door was: Tin Lizzie is out again!

Did I stop to say: Oh, give me a minute to change...?  Let me get out of my Sunday best...? 

Not this farmgirl.

You heard what I said about the pendulum, right?  You know how dung beetles are like the captain of the football team, ignoring you one moment then completely disappearing the next?  I didn't have time to go to my closet and pick out a mite dusting outfit, dear reader.  

No.  I needed to act, not think...a skillset I have refined over the years and expect to one day be hired for by some unknown branch of the government.  

Let me bring you in on a little gem of information.  Mites?  Do not brush off easily.  They do not take a hint.  It's the weirdest thing, but they are very difficult to budge.  Still.  I budged them.  Not an easy thing to do when you're holding a wriggling beetle upside down against her will.  

Another skillset I suspect will come in handy some day...don't ask me how.

Afterward, I couldn't shake the premonition the other two beetles were dead. The girls and I decided potential larvae or not, it was better to deal with the beetles we knew we had on hand.  So we dumped out the terrarium and Caroline went through the substrate with chopsticks and a drinking straw, looking for anything which might resemble an egg.  As far as she could ascertain, the results of the search were negative and I am taking her word for it.  She is a darn fine beetle-keeping apprentice to the apprentice.

I found the other two beetles, Angel and Mad Max.  

Mad Max was definitely dead.  Angel, on the other hand, was very much alive...but covered in mites.  

I de-bugged her as best I could, then placed her and Tin Lizzie back in the habitat.  

Poor little Mad Max.  I hope he had a happy life.  I know it was filled with fresh dung for as long as I knew him.  

I gently swabbed his body with a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol, then added him to my tiny mausoleum of curious things.   

I could go on at length at how deeply this activity absorbed me today.  How seeing the workings of these intricate creatures, both in life and death, fill me with wonder, reverence, a sense of the divine.  Since I was a child I've been fascinated by such things.  They whisper to my imagination, keep me up at night, and make me feel at home on this strange and beautiful planet.  

oh, yoshi. you make it look so easy...

Dear reader, I want to assure you there are other things going on in my life besides a preoccupation with unaffectionate pets.  There really are.   

As it is, I'm not in the mood to write about those things.  I'm not in the mood to write about forgetting carpool (just saying that spiked my heart rate), the disparity between my imagination and the way my hair really looks, volleyball camps and music recitals, end of school madness, horrific bedrooms, car repairs, or anything else which may be plotted on the space-time continuum.

I am in the mood to tell you about my beetles, though I hardly dare.  I have this sneaking suspicion there's an unwritten rule flying through the internet which quantifies the number of times one may reference dung, and Tollipop has roundly exceeded that quota.  

It's just that I recently learned the gestation period for baby beetles is four months.  

Four months, dear reader.  Four months of staring at a dung heap, wondering if any bundles of joy lurk beneath its surface.  

Four months.  Anything could happen in four months!  I could be a rockstar in four months.  I could join the secret service.  My life is simply too dynamic to sit around wondering whether or not it's time to pass out the cigars.  

I'm also in the mood to tell you about this: the enormous blue bee!

Did you think it was a myth, dear reader?  Did you tell yourself: oh, there she goes again, spinning one of her wild and crazy yarns...?

Well, guess again.

This one is not even as big as the one I spotted last year and yet you can ascertain, by the scale of the mountains in the background, that it's at least two hundred feet tall.  

It was waiting for me this morning as I got out of my car to go for a run, hovering not three feet from my face for at least thirty seconds.  

At first I indulged the staring contest but finally I was all: Excuse me, but are you a drone?  Am I speaking to some trigger happy pilot sitting in a darkened room in the remote corner of some sham republic?

It didn't blow my head off so I guess it was a bee, after all.  

Also spotted on my run: a leviathan gopher snake slithering across the trail, just as I was in the middle of my war spy fantasy (wherein I'm a running courier between the battle front and forces camped miles away, of course).  So I was already in a jumpy frame of mind when this fellow suddenly manifested himself, with markings not unlike that of a rattlesnake.  

You should have seen me jump.  You should have seen me fly.  

Dear reader, quota or no quota, why would I go on about forgetting carpool when we can sip our tea and talk about truly pertinent things like this??

my dung beetles are still alive, in case you've been too delicate to ask

Dear reader, I've been worried about my beetles lately.  Why?  Because I haven't seen hide nor hair of them for the past several days.  They're not like dogs, who trip all over themselves to greet you when you come through the door, licking you like a candy cane.  They don't even brush past you in brief, cameo appearances, like cats.  

No.  From what I can ascertain, these beetles pretty much like to hunker down beneath a moist pile of dung.  That's it.  That's their thing. 

For awhile there I was barraging the guy who sold them to me with questions until finally he invited me to keep him posted with the occasional field note, since keeping dung beetles as pets is not exactly well chartered territory.  

I can't imagine WHY.

The reason for my recent concern was that the state of their habitat had gone unchanged over the past few days.  Usually there is evidence of some activity during the night, but lately that hasn't been the case.  I was so tempted to dig them up, dear reader.  But what if they'd already mated and made their little dung ball cocoons?  Wouldn't an excavation be considered a trifle disruptive to the overall nursery design? 

At any rate, I got out of bed this morning and went to inspect the habitat as I always do (for some reason my husband refuses to let me keep it in our room...).  

Good news!  It looked as if someone had been through the place with a wrecking ball.  

I'm not going to lie: it would be nice to get licked from time to time, dear reader.  It would be nice to be panted and slobbered upon.  But apparently that is too much to ask of the P. vindex dung beetle.  They're not sloppy with their affections that way.  

Instead, I will have to let them love me in the way they know how, which is to take a piece of dung and fritter it away like confetti, like a party that went on all night which I hosted, yet whose invitation mysteriously got lost in the mail.  

scarab chic

Dear reader...how are you doing?  So many thoughts on my mind these days, so very few probably worth articulating.  

This one is good: just thinking, as I often do, about this great country, its beauties and opportunities, which I am free to enjoy in relative peace and safety.  I do enjoy them.  And I think about the sacrifice so many have given to make this possible.  I think about many things...about war, about motives, about those who give orders and those who actually fight.  I am left with a deep respect for life, an awareness of the worth of each soul, a profound, sobering gratitude, a sense of duty to try and live well, a heart filled with love for this country, this planet, for mankind.  

I've been enjoying my rainbow scarabs, too.  I will restrain myself from describing the extent to which they fascinate me, since very few people want to hear about bugs or dung.  I don't know why that is, but as a general rule you may count upon it.

Over the weekend we made a quick trip to Utah to attend the wedding of my sister and her fiance.  She has three young children, each one uniquely amazing.  Talking to the eldest is a bit like talking to an encyclopedia.  I told him about my dung beetles one night, feeling that certain thrill which comes when a little kid hangs onto your every word.  He kept asking me if I knew what the beetles did with the dung, and I kept delineating my answer with as much detail as humanly possible.  

Finally, he shook his head and said: that's not all dung beetles do with dung.

I was all: really?  What else do they do?

And he was all: they make balls with it and lay eggs inside and when the larvae hatches, they eat their way out of the balls.  

Then I stomped off because I wasn't smarter than a kindergartener.  

Anyway.  I have a new source for my dung and it's...Izzy's violin teacher.  Do you think there's another violin teacher in the history of this planet who could field the following text:

Hi there! Would you by chance be home today if I came over for some dung?

Miss Mary didn't bat an eye.  She actually offered to bring some to Izzy's lesson in a cooler.  

I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for her influence on my daughter...musically speaking, too.

At any rate, dear reader, I hope things are well with you.  Two students from Sophie's high school have died suddenly in the past several weeks.  My thoughts have been with the people in Oklahoma who suffered such devastation from that tornado. I know tragedies and calamities occur throughout the world every day.  It brought solace to my heart to see my little sister so happy at her wedding, to see someone so good come into her life.  

Such joy and suffering occuring simultaneously, with time never skipping a beat one way or the other.  

I'm not in the mood to wax profound or say something wise about any of this. As if I could.  Just...that I'm thinking, taking it in, trying to keep up, wondering if I can do better, be steadier, keep holding down the fort no matter what comes my way.  

I hope so.  I don't always inspire the greatest confidence in myself, but I certainly hope so.  

I hope so for you, too.

izzy and her combustible violin

Last night we attended Izzy's end of the year school orchestra concert in which she was the soloist for Wieniawski's Scherzo Tarantelle.

If you listen to the recording, you'll hear the scuffling sounds of children being children, which is to be expected at a large school concert.  

As I listened to Izzy's performance, however, the noises didn't distract me once. I didn't even realize I was in a room with other people.

There are no words to describe the bond I feel with Izzy.  I'm her mum, she's my daughter, but it seems we are also the oldest and dearest of friends.  Being around her is like remembering something from a beautiful dream--ancient, familiar, an endless recollection of goodness and love. 

Here are some of her other friends, one is actually a cousin...they are thrilled when people assume they're sisters.

  
This is the performance...

 
but lest you assume she's all scales and arpeggios, there appears to be a latent heavy metal gene in her makeup which I can only assume comes from her father's side of the family.  

Oh, and her uncles, too.  They would also like to take some of the credit.  

for the farmgirl who has everything

Dung beetles.  Or Phanaeus vindex, if you prefer. 

I, myself, am partial to rainbow scarab.  

Either way you look at it, I have three of them!  Two girls and a guy.  

It would be difficult to convey the depth of my excitment, dear reader.  They are tiny yet complete, so intricate in their design, as if you could imagine them opening to reveal interlocking cogs and wheels, all perfectly connected and whirring in motion.

What do they eat?  Well...as previously discussed...dung.  

And while I was gloating earlier about the prevalence of such stuff, I failed to grasp not any old dung will do.  It must be fresh.  And that of a mammal.  A large mammal. Preferably herbivore.  

Excusez-moi.  I didn't realize beetles were such gastronomes.  

They arrived on Saturday afternoon just as I was running out the door to attend a special occasion from which I did not return until late that evening.  When I got home, I noticed the beetles hadn't touched the apple slice I'd left them, so I began to fret about the necessity of procuring some real food.  

I said to my husband: Tomorrow right after church I'm going out to the desert to find them some horse dung.

And he was all: In your dress?

And I was all: That's how I roll.

Then he was all: Why don't we just go out there right now?

I looked at him like he'd just suggested we hop a midnight flight to Paris.

 "Are you being serious??!!," I sputtered.

It doesn't take a lot to blow my mind, dear reader.

So we did.  We went out to the middle of nowhere in the darkest hour of night, to a place where I suspected there would be fresh horse droppings and...there WERE.  

But first we stopped at a gas station and my husband got a bag of chips and a fizzy drink, which clinched the evening as the best date of my entire life.  

And don't feel sorry for me.  It's not like I don't get out.  

It just that THIS, dear reader. Having my husband suggest going out to the desert to search for horse dung in the dead of night with nothing but a bag of chips, a fizzy drink, and a flashlight. 

Oh, and a plastic bag.

Spooky.  Weird.  Fun.  

These are the moments.  I don't know how it gets any better.

And seriously.  You would not believe how my little scarabs plowed through that meal.  It was a bit like the story of Rumplestilskin, only I left them with a pile of you know what, and in the morning?

It was ALL GONE.

 

 

yoshi dreams...

summer of the skirt

Yesterday I forwarded a shipping confirmation to my husband, just to shore up the odds against me forgetting to be home for a very special delivery.

He texted me back: is this about bugs or snakes?

And I was all: in the history of this world I wonder if any husband has ever had occasion to ask such a question of his wife?

But I'm pretty sure the significance was lost on him, dear reader.  I don't think he paused for a moment of silence to let the moment sink in as it properly deserved.

He may have had a moment of silence.  But it wasn't for that.  

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep getting away with this, dear reader. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep posting pictures of fish before someone sends me a mean text demanding a return to the elevated standard of content for which Tollipop is so renowned.

As a matter of fact, yesterday I received a notification someone had unsubscribed from my blog.  That happens every now and then, fair enough, though I couldn't help but wonder if it had anything to do with the fact I made reference to coyote poop.  

Here's the thing about me: I have no desire to shock.  I have no desire to offend...to the contrary.  I'm not the kind of impish girl who seeks occasion to say words which will make you choke on your cookie or sputter in your tea. 

But I did grow up running with the wolves, dear reader.  Running with the wolves and reading Jane Austen.  So I'm a bit of a study in contrasts when it comes to that: prim and proper, yet roundly able to discuss feral droppings if the situation calls upon me to do so.

Back to my original point: the fact of the matter is, yesterday we got another fish.  

This time, for my dear little Sophie.  

Two weeks ago, her club volleyball season ended and I lost no time in requesting her to practice the piano half an hour every day.

She gave me that scathing look teenagers invented which says: Don't you know I'm 15 going on 30??

So I came back with one designed by the Pentagon which says: Honey, I've got 30 beat by a mile.

At any rate, she complied, a bit grudgingly at first, but before long practicing well over half an hour without even realizing it.  

However, this week volleyball practice started back up and I felt sad, thinking this would mean the end of Sophie's time at the piano.  In fairness to her, the practices are grueling and schoolwork is demanding...she is a very busy girl. 

So imagine my reaction the other day when I returned from an afternoon errand to hear the sounds of a Chopin nocturne floating through the house!  

Sophie was home from volleyball practice and had gone straight to the piano, plunking herself down and churning through miles of Hanon, unlocking the intricacies of Bach, crashing down upon octaves of Gottschalk, Joplin, and Beethoven.

It made me only too happy to let her pick out a fish when she finally asked for one, to say the least.

you knew this was coming, didn't you

Dear reader, most parents give their kid roses in celebration of a cello recital. But when Caroline saw what I came home with the other day, she wasn't about to be appeased by a few frowsy blooms.  

No, she wanted a fish of her own.  

To be clear, she's wanted a fish since Izzy got one, but I've been fending her off with hapless excuses (can't you just pretend Gatsby belongs to you?) which were working like a leaky boat until I suffered a moment of impulse and got a betta for myself.

Then the boat sank.

So after Caroline's cello recital the other night, we stopped at a pet store.

Enter Posy.  

Apparently Caroline doesn't care if it's a boy. 

It's a little awkward, getting them together for playdates.

Mainly, I think, because they want to kill each other.

All of which has left my guy with a bit of a complex.

This morning he was all: you like him better than me.

I was all: no way.  you're my favorite fish in the sea.

So he was all (a tad hysterically): then how come he has a name already?!!

And I was all: dude, she gave him a girl's name.  I would not do you like that.

But he could not pull out of his slump:  you just don't care about me.

And I was all: honestly, the scary thing is once you get to know me better you'll realize it's not that I don't care enough.  It's that I care too much.  

:::::::::::::::::

In other news, I came home from a bridal shower last night and ordered some dung beetles online.  

The answer to your next question is: I don't know.

I don't know what's gotten into me, dear reader.  I really don't.

But I will give you a hint as to what dung beetles eat...  

Think.  Long and hard.  

I already gave you the clue.

It's going to be easy enough to find, dear reader.  That stuff is everywhere.  

Is it just me, or is it a tad forward to collect poop from some random coyote while out in the desert?

Call me old fashioned, but it seems you've skipped a few stages in the relationship.  It seems you should share a few laughs together before having to do something like that.

i'm in love with a slippery guy

How are you doing, dear reader?  It's been busy here, lately...the season of recitals is upon us, the end of the school year approaching, all sorts of duties and events presenting themselves with escalating momentum.  

I wish I had more time to talk.  I want to tell you about things...about the desert, about my story, about the girls, about this fish.

This fish. 

Yesterday I woke up having not the faintest idea I'd end up with a fish by lunchtime.  

If you would have asked me: do you think you'll end up with a fish by lunchtime?  I would have looked at you as if you were mad, darling!  Stark raving mad.  

And yet it happened. 

Isn't he the loveliest thing?  When he moves, he turns from blue to green. What's that called again?

Iridescent?  

What's that you say?  Tons of fish do that?

Well, I still think this one's brilliant.  

And the way he moves...it's like a dream...a ghost in a dream.  A ghost in the water in a dream.

But I don't really have a name for him yet.  

Do you?