Cicadas, Mushrooms and Miscellaneous.

I am getting married in October. Between wedding-planning, working, school and sleeping, Blogging has not been on the top of my to-do list. However, I have been taking pictures and occasionally arting. I will finally have my associates degree in December, if all goes well. I wish I could say I am getting a more auspicious degree, but I've worked hard for it and am proud of myself.

I don't know what I want to do to further my education. I would love to take some classes on insects/plants local to this region. I might be moving to New Mexico within the next year. I would really miss all the familiar plants and life forms I have grown up with. Everyone of these pictures were taken in my parents yard in Winston-Salem NC. It is hard to imagine being away from all this.

We are going to NM on our honeymoon. Hopefully, I will find as much to like about that state as I love about NC. I have no idea what to expect. Jeremy laughed when I asked him if there were dust storms or if I would find tarantulas in my bed. I've been doing tons of research, but nothing will compare to seeing NM for myself. 

 It was cicada time. They particularly liked a white pine tree at my parents house. Their drone was almost deafening. 

 It's baffleing to me how such a large creature can emerge from that shell. It must have been awfully cramped.

This one had a bubble in his wing. I would have been interested to see if it survived, but my parents dog ate it, and dozens of it's comrades. I think she ate the one below as well.Such a sad end for a 17 year old bug.

It's been a rainy summer. Something like 21 straight days of rain. One breif sunny spell in all the rain I was walking my dog and saw a mushroom. And then another one. And then a whole cluster of them. They were everywhere, more shapes and sizes than I had ever seen before. 

 This mushroom was growing on a ditch beside my parents house. It was so unique I had to take a picture of it. It's the one that started it all.

 A few inches from the one above was this cluster. Something had been eating them...My dog helpfully finished a few off. It's been a week and he isn't dead yet, so I guess they aren't poisonous. I gave some thought to identifying them, but figuring out what mushroom is which is not my thing. I'd rather look at bugs....

 I like how this one was bursting from under the moss and dirt. Urbanmushrooms.com has some interesting info on mushroom growth.

I think the most visible part of the mushroom is the partial veil and the bit you can barely see curling out of the ground is the cup. I should go back and see if it's still there and if it's grown any more.

 Oh look, a cicada shell.I think this is an earthstar mushroom? 

 My mom's Dragon Wing begonia. I thought it was pretty.

 I found this today and knew it was something special. I thought it was a mushroom at first, but it had a flower. It's Indian Pipe, or Corpse Flower. It is not a mushroom, but a plant without chlorophyll. It gets it's food from a fungus that gets it's food from the roots of trees. Some rare variants can be red.

I got a dog. His name is Heinlein, after Robert Heinlein. He's a pitbull, obviously a vicious man-eater. He is 10 weeks old, and 16.8 lbs. So far he knows how to sit, when properly motivated. He just learned to go down the stairs. No mother has ever been as proud of her child as I was the first time he did it.






 

some older stuff

This is from 12/16. I was getting ready to move, so I haven't been able to post it until now. On the bright side, I now have a craft room. Soon, you can see what the knits and bits are.

This is a toad. His eyes are really pretty. He looks pretty bummed in the 2nd picture. I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of toad he is.

Caterpillars, Aphids and Wheelbugs (again)

 A white-marked tussock caterpillar. Insects seem to come in threes. This guy was hiding under the railing of our porch, inches away from the group below.

The red part is it's back. I originally thought the red part was its face. I'm hoping it was making a cocoon in the crevice.  I'll take photos if it was!

 This a group of wheel bugs. Wheel bugs are a type of assasin beetle. They grab their prey and hold it with it's front legs and stab it with their beak. Their bites can hurt really bad and take a long time to heal.

When wheel bugs mate, as I can only assume they are, the female will usually eat the male. I'm not sure which one(s) are the males and females. I wonder who is gonna get eaten?

 The red patches on the back are scent organs, much like a stink bug. The smell was not as bad a stink bug though. We're infested with them at work, so I know that smell very well.

These aphids are all over a tree that overhangs the porch where the wheel bugs were banging and the caterpillar was hiding.

Wheelbugs eat aphids, so I think they may have been attracted to the porch because of the mass of aphids nearby.

On the ground below the aphids; flies, ants and bees were swarming. I think they were attracted to the sap excreted by the aphids.

When I took this picture, an aphid fell in my eye and some of their excretion got on my face. It smelled like pine trees and honey.

I smelled it before I knew it was aphid pee. The aphid in my eye hurt really bad, I had to stumble back onto the porch and get my mom to get it out. I felt like a little kid again.

A Big Bug Update

A spider web in the bushes. Spiders are one of the bugs I don't like. I used to hate all bugs, but began learning about them to get over the hate. Pretty photos and interesting facts just don't make spiders any more appealing to me.

The spider in here looked way too big and I'm content to leave him alone.

 A Luna moth outside of work. As my coworker said "He's got a hurtie"

He sat in the same spot for most of the day. I'm not sure if he could still fly. Apparently, Luna moths are endangered species because pesticides kill their catapillars.

 Pretty flowers.

 Bugs really like my orange car. I was surprised to learn some insects can see color. However, they cannot see red. I suppose orange is also out, so they aren't attracted to my car for it's color. Perhaps they like it's storage capacity or great MPG.

I have no idea what this bug is. It is a butterfly- notice the wings are held vertically when resting and the antennae have rounded ends. It is also active in the daytime, another clue that it is a butterfly.

If anyone can tell me more than that, I'd love to know more about this butterfly!

I thought I was going to have two mystery bugs in this post.

 It took some searching, but I finally found out what this one is!
It's possibly the most interesting bug I have found.

It is a Robber Fly.  It basically hangs out in an open area, and when another bug flies by it grabs them and inserts its mouth parts into the prey. It  then injects a calming toxin and digestive chemicals. Like a spider, it then consumes the liquified bug.

 He was very friendly and posed for many photos. It was around 9:00 am, and quite misty out, when I took this photo.

 A bee impaled on a cactus spine. Definitely a good thing that bugs don't feel pain the way humans do.

And finally....My three new assemblages, for sale at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/KnitsBitsandBugs

They are the bits in Knits,Bits and Bugs. The bug part should be obvious.

I also like to knit, but as I work and go to school full time, and it's hot outside, the knitting will have to wait a bit. There are plenty of awesome knitters on the internet, so I don't feel like I'm cheating anyone.

Hercules Beetle

This beautifull fellow is an eastern hercules beetle.
He is a male- you can tell by the horns. They are the largest beetle in the US. I thought he was quite large, but after doing some research he was a medium sized beetle. They can grow to be over 2 inches long.

I found him at the grocery store. I don't know why I find so many bugs there. Some kids riding around on the buggies in the parking lot told me that he flew into the light and fell down. Apparently, he was very loud when he fell.

Three more insects

 The "face" of a Regal Walnut Moth. This beauty was spotted clinging to a weed in my local Food Lion parking lot. On the same trip to the grocery store, I saw a baby deer and a racoon. It was more like a nature walk than a trip to the store.

The RWM spends most of it's life pupateing underground, but comes out as this beauty for a few days in July. It's basic goal is to find a mate and make some babies. It can't even eat in this stage- food is less important than sexin.

The moth was so pretty, it was dazzling to look at. It feels like Jim Henson should have designed it, not evolution.

 This is an antlion. I was talking with my Grandma on her porch and looked above her head to see a beautiful periwinkle bug.

As a pupae, he lives in the ground, just like the RWM. I was surprised to learn that this insect is the same one that lives under my studio, just grown up.In the sandy soil below my studio, he digs a pit and when ants crawl unsuspecting into the pit, he pops up and eats them. That is why it's an antlion.

This wheelbug was walking along my deck. His exoskeleton was broken open and some gooey stuff was leaking out from his rear. Perhaps he had been in a fight, or escaped a cat?

I haven't found any more insects this week. I stumbled upon these three in close succession, I doubt I'll see many more this summer.

Squirrel Bones - Part 1

One day last year my dog ran into the yard with something in her mouth. Pepper is 9lbs, and what she had was nearly as big as she was. My dad got her settled down, and took the thing from her. It was the dried out carcass of a squirrel. He wanted to show it to me, so he put in on top of a bucket until I got home. 

I stored the squirrel in my studio (left)  for about a year. I’ve always wanted to articulate it, but never known how. I could not find sufficient resources online, so I’m documenting the process for others to learn from.

 

Be warned, there are some grisly photos. I am a vegetarian

 and think meat is pretty gross, but didn’t find the process 

of cleaning the bones to be that bad, but others 

I’ve shown the photos to did.  Meat=/=food to me, so

 perhaps it is more disgusting if you think meat=food.

The squirrel sat in a pile of turtle shells for about a year. When Pepper found it, it was pretty much skin and bones. It stank a little, but not bad. There were bug casings, but no bugs in it. 

Here come the gross photos. 

 

I started the cleaning process by soaking it in water. This loosened the skin, and used an old pair of scissors and some tweezers to get it off.

 

Once I had most of the skin off, I left it to soak in water for about a week. Some friendly maggots got rid of all the leftover bits of skin and such. I drained the water once during this process- it was rather rancid. Then I flushed the bones with clean water and drained them.  I let them dry in the sun for a bit.

 

When I finally had the bones clean, I discovered a possible cause of death for the squirrel. His hip bone is shattered into three pieces. Also, one of his vertebrae is broken. Perhaps the squirrel fell or was attacked and broke his hip. I was disappointed that my skeleton wasn’t whole, but it was exciting to find a possible cause of death.

 

I intend to soak the bones in a 10% solution of hydrogen peroxide, but have not done this yet. Hydrogen peroxide bleaches the bones white, but does not make them spongey like actual bleach would. I left the bones in a pink bowl in my studio, on a high shelf.  I got home one night to find the door wide open.

 

My cats had gotten inside and knocked the bowl of bones to the floor. The bones were spilled into my Dad’s collection of used motor oil and across the floor.

I was able to find almost all of them, after shuffling the bottles of oil around and sifting through the sawdust and spider webs on the floor. All except one tooth. 

I searched everywhere for that tooth. 

 

Eventually, I found the tooth over 2 feet away from the rest of the bones, inside a coil of metal flashing.  For now, the bones are safely stored in a drawer.