Giant flying beetles have filled the world, each a buzzing bulk of iridescent green. Airborne in a blind flying pattern that ends only when they crash into something. Cling to it. Launch again. I swept our porch clear of its beetle apocalypse of shining carapaces, many already strangely fallen to pieces.
With the storms came a vain hope it might cool down enough to sit outside, you see.
I have seen these beetles before but never seen them in numbers like this.
A single dark smudge caught in buzzing flight just over the mesquite tree, others concealed in their lazy circling of it, perhaps because contact with its feathered leaves does not stun them:
They are fig beetles (cotinus mutabilis).
I love that beetles have their cycles, and the cycle of each species stretches through seasons but also years, connected to rains and temperature and deeper rhythms that most humans remain utterly ignorant of. I remember the year that tiny black clicking beetles filled the world, thousands of them, they got into everything. Just one year when I was little, and we never again saw such waves of tiny black clicking beetles. Still, we kept finding their exoskeletons for many years after. They sat in drawers, boxes and mum’s big chest, perfectly preserved. We pulled lengths of material from it and they would tumble out of the folds, a reminder of the uncomfortable time when they surrounded us, got into our hair and the folds of the couch and clustered in drifts along every edge and in every corner, and died and died and died.
Then there are the cicadas, their steady drone the accompaniment for some of my happiest times. I cannot hear them at my mum’s, but at Julie’s though, at Julie’s I can. At Julie’s it feels like I am in the desert more than that I am in the city, and I love that feeling.
I am house-sitting, taking care of chickens…look where they lay their eggs:
to be retrieved perilously using a rake
The ladies themselves, lovely Ameraucanas…
And the bantam! I only saw her once, but she’s so lovely:
Somehow she has remained invisible for a week in this small yard, not joining the others in their roosting or feasts on cracked corn and mealy worms, until she appeared without warning this morning with a series of small, impetuous clucks.
It has been beautiful since I arrived, monsoon season of stormy skies
Five days now of much needed rain, rumblings, lightenings, and rainbows
And the cat enjoying the cool shade beneath the palms
Finally a cat to play with, and Meli is the cutest thing ever…
All of us are feeling the heat, the unusual humidity, and helping Dan move today was no joke at all. But I did not see a single poisonous spider.
It is pouring now, another wave of fierce and pounding rain. Life fragrance. Happiness.
