Nature's Place

… instinctively. A small tree, it was almost out of leaves to eat. At first, undisturbed, they were without the orange display. Relaxed even.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look …

Once alarmed they just kept producing the orange, enough for it to drip. And their pointed ends, tipped with something else it seems.

Gotta get up close to this stuff, for the viewing pleasure. I didn’t taste it and couldn’t smell it. Maybe other creatures do and can.

It was difficult to find one separated, this one dripped onto itself. Making it less tasty? Who knows without trying it out, or observing.

Little beauty, right? Superb defense mechanism, I suspect, given the circumstances. Such things are proven over time, or discarded.

Walking about the local bush I came across an unusual sight. These are larva similar to that seen alongside the sawfly of a recent post. They have in common their appearance and this raising of their pointy rear end when alarmed but otherwise are of a different kind.

When I touched the stem they were congregating on they raised their rear ends, some quickly blew out that orange liquid and a few just dropped to the ground. I can’t imagine many would-be diners would find their appearance appetizing.

All get defensive, some go passive and some get aggressive, or have the appearance of that. Not unlike people under threat. But unlike ‘many’ people they (mostly) don’t give me any sense of a capacity for self reflection …

… the prerequisite to ‘self improvement’, which, after all is done and been, must end in the simplification of being, because everything else (being identified with any thing that dies, and every thing dies) hurts, eventually.

That is not to say there is no animal, big or small, that doesn’t have it – self reflection. It’s a wonderful earth and such a wonder wouldn’t be out of place here …

© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look

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