Bastille Day: The Tricolor in Invertebrates

Allons, insectes de la patrie!

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Bella Gad, in Memory

Bella Gad was my grandmother’s cousin (or at least that’s as close as I’ll get to being precise about family relationships). This isn’t the place in which to paint a portrait of her even if I thought I could. I will say, though, that Bella was a mixture of extremely strong—even when baseless—opinions, great humor, and tremendous affection. She also had a very good eye and an excellent artistic sense, and I was always very flattered that she was such an enthusiastic supporter of my photography—not just the photos of animals looking winsome, but those in which I tried to frame things differently, to focus on form or abstraction or try a new perspective.

Bella lived in Israel and, although she spoke several languages, didn’t speak English; she and I wrote to each other in mutually half-forgotten French, resorting regularly to the dictionary. Several times a year, I would send her an “album,” a collection of my photos with brief captions in my scant French.

I was only starting to think about which photos I would include in an album this fall when I learned that she had died last week. These are some of the photos I would have included in that album. I wish she could see them.

Tu me manques, Bella.

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"Misanthrope" Is My Middle Name

(Only I spell it with a V.)

[this is not the Scarab of Misfortune
for Stupid People,
but it should be]

I was in a bad mood this morning; it might have had something to do with having to partially disassemble a futon and move it into the bedroom before 9am, though I’m willing to consider other explanations as well. I took a walk in the zoo to cheer myself up, but I wasn’t able to leave the house until 10:30am or so, by which point the zoo was already chock-full of humanity—or humans at least.

Well, no one likes crowds. But I also don’t like people. Some people, sure, but I think you’ll agree with me that, as a species, we’re not so great. (History and politics bear me out on this quite well.) After I had dealt with not only the press of people but overhearing two different sets of visitors arguing, respectively, about whether the frogs in a pond and prairie dogs in their enclosure were "real" (did they miss the big “Zoo” sign out front??), I had had enough, so I gave up on trying to get near the exhibits and focused again on the greenery and the beasts I might find within it.

It worked out pretty well; I got more space, and no one hung around making asinine comments.

[Is that bug real??]

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Here Comes the Sun

I know that right now the world (at least here in the Northern hemisphere) feels pretty bleak: icy cold, barren, and dark—dark so early and for so long that the days feel like a brief glimpse of light flashed in a cave. And I know that we’re all going around right now looking a bit like this:


Or at least I am.

But today the tide finally turns. Today, the Winter Solstice, will be the shortest day of the year—but after today, every day will be just a little longer, and the sun will stay with us for just a little more time.

So, despite the current gloom and the months of cold, snow, and ice we have ahead, remember that, after today, and sooner than you think, the days will be dazzling, the evenings long and golden, the sky hazy with heat.


Soon enough, the flowers, those randy plant genitalia, will open again and lift themselves to the warm heavens, and the air will fill with buzzing and birdsong and rich ripe scents.

Just hold on a few more months now, and remember: tonight the tide turns.

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One Good Shot: End of the Season

An orange-julia butterfly (Dryas julia) in the pollination center of the Invertebrate House gets the last bits of nectar out of a late-season flower.

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Wild Wildlife Returns!

Actually, it’s always there; it’s just that I only rarely get good pictures of these other animals and/or write entries about them. But lately I’ve been seeing a lot of birds and insects around the zoo, and luckily for me, at least some of them behaved photogenic-ly.

The monarch above was hanging around the milkweed behind the invertebrate house, just on the outside of their butterfly house. A few people leaving the exhibit were worried that the monarch had escaped from inside. (To my mind, they should be more worried about the children and adults in the butterfly house who try to catch the butterflies.)

And this mysterious bug (well, mysterious only because I don’t know what it is) appeared to be watching the elephants:


And these ladybugs were trying to have an intimate moment when I voyeuristically interrupted them:


This catbird had a very involved preening session near the otter enclosure:



And this goldfinch was very intent on getting every last seed out of these coneflowers:




And this bee, while she moved too fast to be really obliging, did pose herself alongside a beautiful waterlily:

Wild Wildlife: Insects

The sign of a good zoo, I think, is that it’s landscaped in such a way as to be friendly to native wildlife as well as the animals officially living in it. The National Zoo has done a good job of this, and the trees, hedges, and ponds that border its enclosures are well-populated with local birds, mammals, and insects.


I could talk about any number of those animals—and I probably will at some point—but today I not only saw a bunch of beautiful butter-, dragon- and damselflies, I overheard the following teenage conversation (I should say “monologue”) about said creatures:

“Ohmigod, the other day? There were dragonflies all over the softball field, and we were like, ‘What are they doing here?’ and Julie was like, ‘They’re mating,’ and it’s like, that is soo disgusting. Why do they have to do that here???”

I refrained from suggesting to them that adults probably feel the same way about their make-out sessions. Instead I simply documented the fact that damselflies were “doing that” at the zoo, too: