Scavenging - Laura Gillis

Well, it’s another new year and time again to get back in the groove. One groove I am trying to get back into is eating right. No more chocolate cake, sugar cookies, holiday dips and snacks. So, I while I was scavenging through the freezer, trying to find something good to fix for supper, I found this fabulous water scavenger beetle that I had forgotten about! No, I didn’t fix him for supper. (You will all be relieved to know that we had chicken cacciatore.)

But, back to the beetle. Not only is he large and shiny with feathery legs he is pretty interesting also. When you look at him from the underside he looks remarkably like Darth Vader and he has a keel-like spike that runs down his middle. When I looked this one up, the Kaufman book says that they swim by moving their legs alternately and surface “heads-up,” using their short antennae to channel air to a bubble on their belly. I don’t know if the center spike has anything to do with that or not. They also say that not all of the Hydrophilidae family are aquatic, nor are they all scavengers. I find that interesting because I found this guy in the parking lot of our building at work.... not near water at all. I don’t know what he was doing there or how he got there but I was a lucky girl to find him!

In other news, a few members of the Western Trail Art Association and I took a trip to Altus, Oklahoma to meet with Jennie Buchanan and check out the gallery space at the Museum of the Western Prairie. The Association will be having their first show there on March 24th, 2012 and we are all pretty excited about that. (This is a really nice museum – if you ever find yourself in Altus, you should stop by.) I will post more about this show soon.

I hope everyone is having a good new year! I think I will go clean out the freezer.....

Bug hunting

“Everything in Africa bites, but the safari bug is worst of all.”
- Brian Jackman

Something I haven't done for a l-o-n-g time is to go bug hunting. There again, haven't needed to, as I haven't had anybody in my "animal hospital' recently that needs feeding bugs! But this morning I decided to specifically go and look for something to sketch. It was quite a job - thanks to my chickens, my garden seems to be devoid of insects! However, I did manage to find quite a selection at my pond, which is in a fenced area and rarely gets visited by the chickens.

One of my most exciting finds, was a Water Beetle or Diving Beetle in the pond. These insects only visit a healthy water system and I was ecstatic to see him. I let him be, because I know better than to try and catch him! - they deliver a VERY painful, stinging bite, which lingers for ages! So I did a quick sketch while he sat quietly next to a rock just under the water surface.

My next exciting find was a little thin-tailed scorpion as I over-turned one of the rocks. These little fellas are fairly harmless and non-venomous, but I definitely wasn't going to risk a sting, so he was also quickly sketched before I coaxed him to a new hiding place.

My third find, besides a grasshopper I managed to catch, was a dead wasp lying on the lawn. Her I could bring inside and sketch at leisure. It was a Mud Dauber, and one of my favourite wasps. I've never found them to sting, not even when caught, and I let them be in the house while they dart in and out collecting mud for wherever they're building their mud nest, usually in a corner up against the ceiling, and every now and then it's removal time when I haven't seen any activity near the nest for some time.