Moth, Emerging
Last Friday was a profound day for me. Intense, and intensely profound. And each day since has been either one or the other. The lack of details is not my being coy, but because I simply cannot share everything right now for various reasons. But I can share this moth.
Last Friday evening, immediately following this bout of profundity, a crazzzzzzy windstorm blew up. One moment, all was calm; the next, the sky was solid with whipped-up dust and trees were bending sideways. And then, perhaps half an hour later, the wind was gone, and all was calm again.
I went outside, because I love to be outside just after a windstorm. And I spotted this moth, clinging to a weed near the ground, next to one of my garden patches. I knelt beside it, my head low to the ground, studying this incredible moth. Its body was huge and fat, black and gray and yellow and white, about the size of my thumb but slightly longer. Its face was awesome; it looked carnivorous, strong, and so incredibly graceful, its wings hanging behind it like a cape.
The moth swayed softly in the remaining breeze, clutching the weed, waiting for something. Unhurried, unworried, secure in itself and waiting. Then I saw the hole. And now I must back up in this story-telling for a moment: Roughly seven weeks ago, I was weeding my garden and saw an enormous caterpillar amongst my watermelons. It was a glossy bright green, larger than my thumb. Huge! I took two twigs as chopsticks and gently moved the massive ‘pillar to the dirt outside my garden plot, near a clump of weeds. And then watched in awe as the caterpillar disappeared into the earth. It started digging a hole with its nose and down into the dirt it went, disappearing completely. The next day, I had forgotten about it.
Now, I noticed the hole in the ground near this magnificent moth. A hole exactly the size of its body. A hole where the strange caterpillar had disappeared. I do believe it made its cocoon in the earth ~ or that perhaps the earth itself was the cocoon ~ and that this moth had just emerged. And was waiting to fly.
Darkness crept in and I walked Daisy & Co to the corrals, and the next morning, the moth was gone. Days passed; I wondered about the moth, wondered where it went. I spent nights sitting outside, watching the silhouette of a bat swooping between my home and the stars every night.
This morning, I saw the moth again, clutching a large rock I have on my deck. Resting again. And this makes me wonder, perhaps it is not a bat visiting me every night, but is, in fact, this moth in flight.
UPDATE: The moth is Manduca quinquemaculatus, aka Five Spotted Hawk Moth. More info HERE. I noticed this morning that the “eyes” on its shoulder are actually three-dimensional and raised! Thanks, Keitha, for the link!
UPDATE II: The moth is still sleeping (?) on the side of the big rock on my deck, but has been moving as the sun crosses the sky, to stay on the shady side of the rock!
Yay #2
More chickens!
Mike loves chickens and has had chickens and roosters for as long as I’ve known him. Last year, he added a few more speckled hens to his flock and he was planning on doing the same this Spring. But this spring was crazy and it snowed in May and when we finally made it to the farm supply store, ready to buy,
all their chicks were gone!
I was at the farm supply store last week picking up some feed for Daisy, and as I was leaving, a sign by the door caught my eye: “Free chickens to good home,”
it said. I scribbled the accompanying phone number on my feed bag, called it when I got home, and was happy to learn the chickens were still in need of a good home. Ours! Mike was thrilled with my chicken sleuthing. We drove out the next night, and, with the former owner, plucked the hens and their rooster off their roost, tucked them gently into a few cardboard boxes, drove back to Mike’s house and introduced them to his coop.
They are so sweet and happy! There are seven white leghorn hens and one ridiculous rooster, each a year and a half old. The pecking order between the roosters was established the first morning and the hens began laying that very day ~ oblong proof that they feel comfortable in their new home and are not stressed by the move. They are free to roam and spend the day eating grass and bugs and goofing off en masse and then return to the coop at night. Happy chickens, happy us. Hurrah!
Meadowlarks, Indian Paintbrush, & Me!
AHHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Today, I became a local. Today, I became Wyoming. Today, I came up with my first bona fide cowboy sayin’. The great country western songs are full of them. The old timers speak these gems all the time. This morning one came out of my mouth. Out of my mind.
“It takes effort to be that lazy.”
Wahoooooo!!!!!!!!!!! More than having a drivers license, a rural address, a rifle in my name, this makes me Wyoming. Four and a half years in, and I am in.
What’s your favorite cowboy wisdom or one-liner? Share it in the comments!
The Road Home
Incredible hospitality and loveliness notwithstanding, I was so excited to be heading home! I was like a barn-spoiled horse, lunging forward, straining at the bit, coiled and ready to be back just as soon as I could possibly get there.
I had been in the habit of filling my tank with gas first thing in the morning before setting out on each leg of my trip, but on the day I was returning home, I couldn’t stand the detour ~ I had half a tank as it was, and I knew I’d be stopping in Billings, Montana for an errand just two hours into my day’s journey, and that I could just as easily fill up there.
Famous last words.
The road to Billings was smooth and quick but I got a bit lost while in Billings, and was so focused on finding my way out of town (and on the road home), I forgot all about getting gas.
Now, there is but one road from Billings to the Wyoming border where I must cross it, and it is a dislikeable road. I first rode this road on my Vespa in 2005 and I disliked it then, and it has not improved. It’s two lanes, one in each direction, straight, flat, interminable, and there is always traffic. Lots of annoying speeding cars and lots of slow RV’s and lots of big rigs just doin’ what they do.
I am not a reckless driver. It’s just not worth it. It irritates me when people act like cars are toys. So, even though I was achingly anxious to get home, when I ended up behind a semi that was driving rightright behind another semi, I gritted my teeth and hung out where I was.
There were opportunities when I could have passed the semi directly in front of me, but there was no room for me to fit between him and the semi in front of him and no way for me to pass them both at once. So there I was and there I stayed, drafting a semi that was drafting a semi at a steady 53 mph (when I could have been going 70).
I kept wanting to hate the semi in front of me but every time I tried to, I was overtaken by a nagging feeling that I should be grateful to it. I had no idea why I was feeling this, and so I compromised by being reluctantly annoyed.
As we began to approach the Wyoming border, a desolate stretch of road free of towns and human life, I glanced down at my dash. And I saw my gas gauge needle hanging limply below the red. I had forgotten to get gas in Billings! And now I was in the middle of nowhere.
Obscenities flashed through my mind and I held my breath, held it for ten miles, each roll of the odometer bringing me closer to the town of Frannie, Wyoming, yet also closer to asphyxiation. I reached Frannie. There was an ancient gas pump in a gravel lot with a broken down rusted out car angled in front of it, a futile hope, but I pulled into the tobacco shop across the street and ran in barefoot with my truck idling, to ask (rather frantically) if the pump was functional.
Nope! Gas could be procured 30 miles to the north or 8 miles to the south. But I had at least reached Wyoming, and even though I’d never met the people in the tobacco store before, they treated me as family. “Don’t worry,” said the trucker at the counter when I wondered out loud about the possibility of coasting south. “I’m headed that direction and I’ll keep an eye out for you!” So at the very worst, I had an angel willing to run me to town and back for a gas can of go juice should my trusty truck putter out. An angel driving a big rig, to boot!
And let me take a moment to state the obvious: I can be such a blond sometimes! The truth is I detest stopping for gas ~ it’s been an aversion of mine ever since I started driving. My first car, my wonderful little ’67 Bug, had a reserve tank. So when the main tank was totally depleted, I could just push a lever and then have the reserve tank to run from. But there was no gauge for the reserve tank and I’d push the limit so often, and ran out of gas so often, and had to hitch to a gas station so often, I took to carrying a gas can in my Bug’s tiny boot.
Anyway. I made it eight more miles. Miraculously. I made it all the way to a gas station and it had everything to do with the semi I had been trapped behind for so long. If I hadn’t been drafting him for hours, and if I had been going 70 instead of 50mph, I know I would have run out of gas in the desolate zone north of the Wyoming border.
Moral Of The Story: If you aren’t getting what you do want, perhaps it’s because you’re being protected from something you really don’t want!
Trailing to The Mountain
I jumped out of my truck (after my little inter-state jaunt),
tended my garden,
then swung into the saddle to trail cows
up to their gorgeous mountain summer pasture.
This is midway.
The land below seems so far away.
And on the mountain, there’s nothing
but
the mountain.
It’s heavenly.
« go back — keep looking »MY NEW BOOK!
More, Elsewhere
- No Tweets Available
