an insect lesson

There are now two mosquito-proof tents in my back garden. One to enjoy the garden without being bitten to death, and the other to let the grass in the first one recover. Tent mark two went up fine yesterday, and was working really well until we went out there after dark and found it was full of little beetley insects that had apparently come from nowhere. They had probably slept in the ground all day, then woken up in the evening and attached themselves to the inside of the tent trying to get out. Unlike mosquitoes, they were very polite and well-behaved insects, and they were lined up in neat rows along the top edge of the net-windows, and gathered in small groups round the ceiling air-vents. They made no fuss, and when we came back a bit later to try and get them out, they plopped quite calmly into a big plastic cup and agreed to be deposited outside on the grass.

I don't know what they were, but that's my kind of insect. It is very encouraging that not all insects go about biting you a few times under false anaesthetic then running away before you notice the great itchy lump growing on your leg. It is also notable that even insects can line up in an orderly fashion and wait for further instructions. One might explain this as mere dumbness, but does panicking and being aggressive denote intelligence in moths, flies and mosquitoes? I do not think so.

I have been watching various animals out there. We have a resident comedy-squirrel who does daredevil tricks in the trees and sometimes naps draped over a branch with all four legs dangling. There are a lot of cicadas, I've been collecting their old shells. There was a huge butterfly flapping around near tent one last week, with some kind of military airplane pattern on its back. And I've been meaning to look up what the red birds are. There are two, one is brighter than the other. All the animals like figs anyway, they've been helping themselves liberally to the tree. I wonder if the walnuts will be next.