Category Archives: Birds and Butterflies

This last week has been all about the bugs. Or, as my entomologist husband would say, it’s been all about the insects. As he has told me many times in the past, true bugs have sucking mouth parts. That being said, saying that something’s been insecting me doesn’t quite sound the same.

First off, at work our office has moved into a new building. And since it was being remodeled beforehand, the windows were always open. Which allowed plenty of insects egress into the building, where they happily set up shop. We have fruit flies, flies, gnats, ants, and a few cockroaches (which I admit, I also saw in Bricker Hall.) They are thinking about doing something to get rid of the little pests – I had one fruit fly that just flew around my head all day. Not a piece of fruit to be seen. I named him Fred.

Then on Friday night, we put some plants in my front garden because it was supposed to rain on Saturday, and I thought that would be the perfect time to get them all into the ground. Pete and I were nearly eaten alive by Asian tigers. We sprayed with Off! but the little blood suckers just laughed at it, finding the one centimeter of skin that hadn’t been coated. Of course, with dirty hands, swatting at them wasn’t the best thing to do. I finally gave up and swatted away; I looked like I had rolled in the dirt when I got inside.

As I was relaxing upstairs Saturday afternoon, Seamus, our cat, came up to lay on my lap, something he usually doesn’t do. I noticed he had all of this white stuff on his head, and in looking at it to try and figure out what it was, I noticed the white stuff was moving. I screamed at Pete, “Seamus has something alive crawling all over him!!” Pete took a sample under his microscope and declared Seamus had mites. As did Ciara. Walking dandruff is what it’s called. Of course, no vet was open, and all the on-line treatments were prescription only. Then, in combing a sample of the fur from the other cats, I found a flea. Of course, that meant that everyone had fleas. We were told at PetPeople in Clintonville to try diamaceous earth. It’s a very fine silica powder that somehow cuts the exoskeleton of fleas, drying them out and eventually killing them. It’s very safe to use. We sprinkled some on each cat and around the places they liked to lay, after washing everything we could. It seems to have worked on the mites – Pete saw some under the microscope, but they were all dead.

Today, I noticed that our burr oak’s leaves were looking a bit yellow and the red oak’s leaves were turning brown. Turning over the leaves, I noticed lots (and I mean lots) of eggs and insects. Pete says they are lace bugs (you, know, the ones with the sucking mouth parts). Well, they certainly were sucking out the sap from those leaves. The red oak had more eggs that Pete couldn’t identify. Dang bugs – or insects! Or whatever.

Finally, has any noticed the lack of butterflies around, especially monarchs? Pete and I haven’t seen anything but a few black swallowtails, one tiger swallowtail, and one mourning cloak. We haven’t seen one monarch anywhere in Central Ohio. I’ve heard that the conditions for monarchs this year weren’t very good – storms and drought – as well as loss of habitat in Mexico. The only thing I’ve seen butterfly-wise are the cabbage whites, introduced from Europe.

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Until next time!