Tetramorium caespitum

or, Pavement Ant

You march with many sisters, Amazon.
Across your desert mount you track your twin
In rushed obedience to now begin
The second hill to bring adherents on
This upper plain, for war against your foes.
Of your six limbs you give but empty care;
For queen and colony alone you bear
The unexamined burdens, senseless blows.
If thinking were your province, then would you
Forsake your bloody kind? Does thought condone
That social animals desire to be alone?
Would reason force the end of selfless crews?
What fate's the maid's who lacks a queen to give
Her harvest to, and guards her chance to live?

Forficula auricularia

or, The European Earwig

Your body lithe, you swim in dying leaves,
A hunter seeking moribund remains,
In reeking flowers, dumps, and swollen eaves,
Devouring pests and, lacking them, our grains.
Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds,
Which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
Not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
Though still provoking fear with pinching crown.
But 'neath the wintry earth you lay your clutch
In chambers underground, and tending turn
Your eggs to forestall mould, and mother much
Those white nymphs who in spring your ways will learn.
From humankind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death, you raise up life.

4 March 2010, Fort McMurray

For some reason earwigs have always fascinated me; their bodies seem so graceful, their browns so glowing and clear. I used to be afraid of them, but I'm not any more. If they pinch me, it's my own fault for handling them. However, I recognize how other people are afraid of them. I've wanted to write a sonnet on them for some time and, after researching them on Wikipedia and letting the ideas percolate for a few days, something finally came to me. I was meditating on the form of the sonnet, and the above structure resulted.

Lines broken to reflect pauses in reading:

Your body lithe,
you swim in dying leaves,
a hunter seeking moribund remains in reeking flowers
dumps
and swollen eaves,
devouring pests
and, lacking them,
our grains.

Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds
which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
though still provoking fear with pinching crown.

But 'neath the wintery earth
you lay your clutch in chambers underground
and tending turn your eggs to forestall mould
and mother much those white nymphs
who in spring your ways will learn.

From human kind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death
you raise up life.

7QT XXV (Two-week edition)

Righty, because I did not do 7 Quick Takes last week, having been in Edmontonia and all, I will cover 2 weeks with 7 takes. Deal? Deal. Also, I don't think I have that much news in the first place.

1. Last weekend we went to Edmonton, driving down Highway 63 on Friday. It was the first time I'd been south of the airport since September. Man, it is nice to be heading south on that highway. Of course, eventually we drove north on it as well, returning to Fort McMurray. In that direction we saw more of the land around us; southbound it got dark before we were too far down and we couldn't see much. Before it was dark, though, we got to one of the more visually interesting sections: to the edge of sight to the east and west, short, thin evergreens march over low rolling hills. While the forest is tangled, it isn't thick. There are few needles on the branches. This area was struck by forest fire maybe not quite a decade ago, and the trees we see are the survivors and the since-grown. Here and there, often on tops of hills, are pockets of taller thicker trees, sometimes deciduous. The look, to me, is Cretaceous.

2. First thing Saturday morning, we went to the Royal Alberta Museum. We stayed until 3:00. This was likely the coolest part of my weekend. I won't go in detail about each exhibit and display, but I will say discuss two: 1) in the front lobby there was a collection of photographs of endangered cultures from Tibet, India, Mali, and elsewhere, and 2) upstairs there was an insect-related exhibit at which we got to hold some cool specimens. The photographs were black and white and exceptionally beautiful. The insects, arachnids, and other arthropods were awesome, too. I got to hold two species of stick insect and I got to pat or stroke a tarantula. Best of all, I got to hold a giant African millipede, something I have always wanted to.

As I always do in museums, I began to feel saturated before we finished the Aboriginal Culture exhibit. I had taken in too much info before the day was up and I could not take in any more.

3. After this we went to Value Village. While Mom was spending forever in the clothing section, I was trying not to buy lots of books. In the end I got Samson Agonistes, The Dante Club, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Deception Point, Saint Augustine's Confessions, The Dead Zone, The Witch of Portobello, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/Weir of Hermiston. I may have failed just a little bit. (As you may now know, I read Samson Agonistes on the drive home.)

4. Then, and this was getting late, we went to the West Edmonton Mall. We had all been before, so it wasn't as though we were gawking around like tourists any more. That's not to say it isn't an interesting place, but after your first visit it stops being quite as spectacular. Mom wanted to get some supplies from DeSerres and I wanted some CDs from HMV. I have lost much of my music when my computer crashed, so I have only been listening to the music I took from Cait's and Quinn's computers. Now I have the soundtracks to Gladiator and Pan's Labyrinth. That was the last place we went that evening and we left for Fort McMurray pretty much first thing Sunday morning.

5. Reading. I finished The Dead Zone this week, not to mention getting through most of The Elements of Style, which if you have a prodigious memory you know I bought a little while ago now. I have started lullabies for little criminals, which I bought almost a year ago by now. I don't know about it yet.

6. On Thursday I finished my exhibit at work. So that's that. I am doing other things at work now, but it still feels odd not to be working on my project. I have been working on it since September. I understand now how it can be odd to finish a Master's. How can I be done? What comes next? etc. I'll let you know when it launches.

7. Last night, the folks and I went to see the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour at Keyano College. It's a two-night thing, but we only saw the last night. There were a number of great films: Revolution One, about off-road unicycling, which is actually pretty slick; Deep [something in Japanese], a very brief one about skiing in very deep powdery snow; A Little Bit Mongolian, an excellent film about an Australian boy who learns horse-racing among traditional Mongolian nomads, the quality of which film was mitigated only by the main character's mild sullenness and by his mother's silly colonial phrasing ("He's a real Mongolian now!" she says at one point); one the title of which I'm forgetting, about taking solar ovens to African countries while white-water rafting across the continent; Spirit Songs, about a Tibetan family connecting through music despite being separated by exile; To the Rainbow, about a famous mountain-climber who broke his head and is now returning to one of his favourite climbs, called The Rainbow, despite being in much lower physical condition and not having the use of his right arm (this was something to see); and The Ultimate Skiing Showdown, consisting of stunt-skiing and skiing accident clips put to "The Ultimate Showdown (of Ultimate Destiny)."

7 Quick Takes is hosted by Conversion Diary.

Marine Park Photos

I have included photos that will not "open" the Marine Park prematurely. These are more showcasing details than wholes. The moths invaded one day, and the swallows soon followed. The lady porn is the inside cover of a Viking historical romance I accessioned in the Miskanaw galley. I thought it was funny. The close-up of the moth was actually taken at Heritage Park. So sue me. I hope the rest explains itself. Much of this is in-process on the boats.

Hopefully these pictures don't come out too jumbled.

Chrysalis

I went to a butterfly place today. I'll give you the whole story later. For now I'll throw you this photomanipulation of a chrysalis picture I took.

Movie Review: Starship Troopers

[Note: spoilers]

Starship Troopers: I watched this one because I heard the book was one of the most important science fiction novels of all time. You know, one of the top twenty-five to have defined the genre. It's about war and its effects on people and society, written by a vet. You can see that influence in the movie itself, though I have to wonder how much of the genre-defining qualities were lost in the page-to-film translation. It comes out, for the most part, as a simple science-fiction bug-shooter blended with an army movie, but for little touches that make you forced to wonder how much more there is to it. For instance, there's the scene where the enroller says of the man character's acceptance into the Mobile Infantry, "The Infantry made me the man I am today," and then rolls back his chair to reveal that his cyber-prosthetic arm is the tip of the iceberg to his two missing legs. This makes you think a little more about the rhetoric of manhood and nation- or identity-forming through the military, but the moment is fleeting. Add to this the brutal training methods at boot camp and the creepy fascist undertones (particularly the Intelligence guys in the Nazi SS getup), and you get pro-war, pro-America jingoism played in enough of a minor key that you're forced to get that there's a bit more to it than what's on the surface.

There are two elements that make this movie really stand out for me, one good and one bad. The good comes first.

The romantic interest story in the movie, while fairly simple, is one of the most convincing I've seen. Boyfriend and girlfriend each have interests on the side; the guy has a girl from highschool after him who he's pushing away, and the girl has a guy from another school flirting with her to whom she's more than willing to give, shall we say, attention. After winding up in different arms of the military, she dumps him via a Dear John video. He falls into the other girl's arms--she's been assigned to his squad--and she's already started a dalliance with that other guy, who's her superior officer. The main girl (Christmas Jones from The World is Not Enough, incidentally) thinks the main guy dies, and things go on from there. But then the two side interests, after finally getting what they're after, up and die near the end of the movie, getting themselves conveniently out of the way for the inevitable reunion between main guy and main girl. Except that that reunion is never explicitly romantic, or the romantic side of it doesn't happen onscreen, at any rate. There are two other movies to deal with that, but I don't know for sure that they're in those movies. Anyway, that part of the story was actually enjoyable and not taken for granted by the scriptwriters.

The part I had trouble with is also near the end, so don't read if you want to watch the movie. The bugs have in their colonies a caste dubbed 'the brains,' which are old and intelligent insects that organize the bugs' attacks and defenses. They also suck out human brains either for analysis or for augmentation to their brain power; I'm not sure which. Anyway, by the end of the movie they catch one and the protagonist's best friend from highschool, a sensitive, manages to read its mind. With dramatic pause, out of the sunlight scene of victory, he says of the disabled creature, "It's . . . afraid." Everyone cheers. After this we see the three highschool friends chumming it up, reunited at last, and celebration goes out for the army trainer who finally made private. Yay! And then we are subjected to a news video montage about the progress of the war, the advances being made, the brave commanding troops, a call for enlistment, etc. Included is a shot of the brain bug in a lab being subjected to obviously painful experiments. All of this is packaged like the optimistic news war reports of the 40s-60s, with pluckly music in the background. And then we see starships flying out into space with a rising score almost akin to the famous introduction and conclusion music of Star Wars. And this makes me queasy, because all I see is this bug being tortured and terrified by oppressive captures. I realize this is the same bug that killed Christmas Jones' bf through brain-sucking, and that it instigated a reign of terror on several humans, but I still have a hard time dealing with the plucky and again jingoistic treatment of cruelty, even on enemies. What makes it even more disturbing is that I can't tell whether the film is intended to be understood this way, or whether it is at this point meant to be read on surface level. Any suggestions from folks who've seen the movie?

Poems about Insects

Emily Dickinson is a poet I have some difficulty with. She seems caught up in her own world of emotion and pain; the narrative voice intrudes in places where it oughtn't; the text is too overtly feminist for my tastes, not transcending gender as Virginia Woolf expects; these poems don't have the tight intricacy or cleverness of my favourites. However, she does right about insects, which gives her at least 100 extra points on my scale. Here are two:

Poem 96

Pigmy seraphs - gone astray -
Velvet people from Vevay -
Belles from some lost summer day -
Bees exclusive Coterie -

Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with emerald -
Venice could not show a cheek
Of a tint so lustrous meek -
Never such an ambuscade
As of briar and leaf displayed
For my little damask maid -

I had rather wear her grace
Than an Earl's distinguised face -
I had rather dwell like her
Than be "Duke Exeter" -
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the Bumblebee.


Poem 1523

How soft a Caterpillar steps -
I find one on my Hand
From such a Velvet world it came -
Such plushes at command
It's soundless travels just arrest
My slow - terrestrial eye -
Intent opon it's own career -
What use has it for me -


How fitting to call bumblebees pygmy seraphs gone astray! It's one of those images that you feel you've always been looking for. And look at the caterpillar poem. Do you see how she uses dashes? In line 6 the dash, like the caterpillar, arersts your eye, slows it down, to match her eye in the narrative. How clever. And then the dash at the end (a common Dickinsonian technique) leaves the poem unfinished, with the caterpillar still on its 'plush' little march, like all caterpillars you see, crawling ever onward.

Piggles

I was at the Pinery the day before yesterday, and had the pleasure of meeting these three caterpillars. I hope you enjoy these photos. They moved a lot and were therefore difficult to capture with the supermacro. The last one wanted on my camera. [Update 13/09/08: The first three photos are from last year; the first two are of a cecropia moth caterpillar. The remainded are indeed from the Pinery two days before the original creation of this post.]

Oh, and my mother's the hand model.

Fresh Water makes me feel small

Watching Planet Earth
Fresh Water makes me feel small

I.

under Lake Baikal's shield
fish sneak in ice
while freshwater seals glide
over fingers of alien-green sponge
and arthropods yellow like mangos
eat the dead where even bacteria cannot survive
in the oldest deepest lake

II.

in the mountain streams
larvae hook to the rocks
and spin safety lines in case they slip
like aquatic mountaineers
while shrimp catch passing detritus
and giant salamander prowl at night
for eighty years

III.

on the bed of Lake Malawi
cichlid make craters in the sand
and dolphin-fish hunt
sensing electric currents
while mayfly grubs age in the abyss
to buoy during rainy season
and explode in clouds of flies
on the surface
since colonial times

________________
The prof wrote of this, "and I want to say... so? There should be something further here, a reflection that goes beyond the title, something that moves the reader to understand your response to this. It's like a description without illumination." I think she's right, so I'll work on maybe a section IV. that provides that illumination.

On the Rest of Saturday

When I got home from InterPLAY on Saturday I started supper; however, the power went out half-way through, and supper didn't get cooked. The power-outage also knocked out all of the restaurants in walking distance. My Dad, brother, and I finally managed to get wheels (the van having died in one of my brother's recent adventures) from my cousin, and we went down to the Lower Townsite/Downtown to see about the van and then to eat.

We ate at MacRay's in Gregoire, and I had a Meat Scrambler, which is awesome. We're looking at hashbrowns in the bottom, covered in eggs scrambled with sausage, ham, and beef, coated in turn with melted cheese. Incredible.

Anyway, we then dropped my brother off at work (he was on the night shift this past weekend), and went home. My cousin was watching the Olympics--Mexico v. Brazil, women's beach volleyball. This is an event in the Olympics? I had thought beach volleyball was just an excuse to watch young people frolicking in swimsuits/to frolic with young people in swimsuits. Who knew it was a real sport? (And I'll grant that probably quite a few people watch the Summer Olympics--particularly synchronized diving--to see young people frolicking in swimsuits.)

Then my brother called us and told us to look outside, because the Aurora Borealis was out. I'd never seen it before. It's something of a shame that it wasn't more spectacular, but what do you expect in the late summer, in the city, at 10:30 at night?

And then when I was writing the last blog about Saturday, a little green leaf hopper was hopping around the computer, including on my arms, hands, and glasses. He was quite the little fella.

The Ant War

Just a brief note on something I saw at work the other day...

There's a theatre camp at the park where I work, and I overheard from the kids that there was a massive ant battle. Well, I had known there was a carpenter ant infestation nearby, so I just assumed that there had actually been two. The kids showed me the battlefield, and it was indeed littered with little ant corpses. The teacher and most of the kids mourned a little, which was surprising and heartening. Two girls asked me why they would suddenly start fighting, and I explained that ants are territorial. Because food can sometimes be scarce, ants are 'programmed' to try to destroy any nearby colonies. Often this results in large battles and the wholesale destruction of both colonies. I had almost said that, in this, they were remarkably human, but I decided they were two young for such cynicism and, really, that way of thinking is terribly unhealthy. The Cold War did end without nuclear holocaust, right?

Ants are interesting things. I was given ant-extermination literature at work so that I could deal with the ant problem, and learned some things about carpenter ants. They will have six different castes of ant in their nests. Their nests, tunnelled into wood, are called "galleries." A single queen establishes a parent gallery, and then other colonies are started as the population grows. In this sense they really are imperial. Unlike other ants, however, the queen does not usually reside in the parent nest, but either goes out starting new colonies or forages in the nearby area. This means exterminators have a harder to eradicating carpenter ants than other kinds, since servant ants cannot bring the queen toxic food and destroy the population at its source.

I also had the luxury of seeing aphid farms on trees and weeds at work. Since none were on seedlings or plants we want, but instead plants we don't and mature maples that can handle the low populations, I saw no need to exterminate them. It is really interesting, watching the ants scurry about the aphids. I'm led to wonder whether they herd them to new food sources when the local one runs out. I had read that this does happen, but I don't recall how reliable my source was. I certainly didn't see that sort of activity when I was watching them.

Incredible things, ants. Very interesting.

Pictures of insects

I thought I would open this with butterflies, since everyone loves butterflies. This one was quite "tame," and let me get very close.
This fellow (a tiger swallowtail) was out in the woods north of Fort McMurray.



The people in Alberta call these little fellas June bugs, but anyone who knows insects knows that this is not a June bug. Tarsands beetle is also a common name, but pine beetle or cedar sawyer are more accurate. Occasionally they bite, taking a chunk off your arm; that's only when they think you're a tree. It's fun to watch them fly, as their antennae poke way up and their bottoms (abdomen, if you prefer) hang down.

This is blurrier, but it allows you to see the length of the antennae.

This sphinx moth was in the stair well two years ago.

A bumblebee at work last year.
When I get my hands on more insect pictures, I will post them!

EDIT July 29, 2008:

This is an unfortunately blurry picture of a grasshopper. I tried to use my supermacro, but it, alas, focused behind him.

And this is a ladybug behind Drumheller.

EDIT September 13, 2008:

I have no idea what this guy is. He's awesome though. Pinery, last year.

EDIT 26 January 2009: a stick insect, a giant madagascar hissing cockaroach, and butterflies, from the Butterfly Conservatory in Cambridge.




EDIT: 4 June 2008; I think you call this a stonefly.

This is another tarsands beetle (see Wally the Bug above). He landed on the outside of the window, so I got some close-ups. Do you know what's cool about these guys (other than the length of their antennae)? They have pivoting necks. They can crane their head up to look around. The first picture captures this, I think.

Also, I should clean the window.