8:15 p.m. - 2002-09-20
Bugs and Muppets
Our house is a vortex for stickbugs. There was another one on our front door last night. He wasn't quite so spectacular as the one a week ago, only about six inches long. He was, however, a lot more active.
Well, a lot more active for a stickbug. He was waving his antennae a little.
I was hoping he would die peacefully, of natural causes so that I could put him in a presentation case (with tweezers, mind you, because I am very squeamish) and send him along to Simon. No such luck. He must have been in the peak of good health because he was gone this morning.
I have got a huge dead cicada for Simon, though. I found it in our driveway. It is so big that when I first saw it I though it was a dead hummingbird - it is about the same shade of green - and I was all bummed out to think that one of our pair of hummers had croaked.
Boy, was I horrified when I realised it was not a hummingbird, but instead was this fantastically huge bug. Don't ask me how I got it into the presentation case. It involved a large dose of Glennfiddich and some screeching.
We also had a four inch long grasshopper on the window last night, and today the cats killed a spider that was two inches across. It was black and hairy and looked like a miniature tarantula.
Like Big Bugs? You'll LOVE Alabama!
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Bruce stopped by this evening on his way to the Biology Department's annual retreat. He was wearing a classically Brucian outfit: green army fatigue pants and a grey silk shirt that his mother sent him.
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We're having what passes for fall in Alabama. The sky is sad and overcast, yet it is still in the 80's out. The trees are losing their leaves, not because of cold weather, but because after many months of heat they can't support leaves anymore.
And we're having "severe weather". The first tornado alert of the season came when I was in painting class on Wednesday. One of the secretaries came in and told Jack that there was a tornado alert for Meridianville, where he lives.
He just shrugged. "Nothing I can do about it," he mumbled. "Minaswell keep painting."
I have a feeling Jack has kept painting throughout most of the crisis points in his life. He's really an unbelievable artist, in a somewhat classical realist style.
He's also very endearing. Jack is like a 75 year old, six foot tall Muppet. If you can imagine a tall, elder Muppet with a shock of white hair, a shaggy mustache, and a beatific smile, you can pretty much imagine Jack.
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