This week as I turned another year older I had a chance to reflect on a few things and observed a few bugs too.
My theme at school these past few days has been bugs and I’ve had some fun putting together art for the week, particularly some egg carton bees and worms made with sticks.
For some months now Nicky liked to catch various ladybugs and put them in bottles. Unfortunately we haven’t managed to keep them alive for long. We googled how to feed ladybugs. We gave the first one sugar and the ants overwhelmed it. Then we put the next one in a moat kind of effort to prevent the ants getting in and gave it raisons. That one died too.
It was a bit dark surrounded by water in Nicky’s room so the next one went on the kitchen window sill. A bit too hot for him and he died too.
So we haven’t been so good with the ladybugs.
Anyway one day Nicky saw a tiny lizard in the bathroom and… guess what.. he wanted to capture that too. I wasn’t happy about this but duly googled what lizards eat and one of the things that they eat which I had was strawberries. So we put a strawberry in (although I’m not sure that particular lizard ate strawberries but anyway).
A few days later the strawberry is mouldy so we took it out and left some strawberry juice in.
Then a few days later (I’d forgotten about the lizard) Nicky says the lizard is scaring him, can I please take it out his room.
Oh dear.
We’ve killed another creature. And this one is really looking awful. His tail was off and his eyes were sunken in. And all I could think about was the poor lizard’s suffering alone in that jar. How awful. I was really upset.
Of course I knew this instance was just reminding me of how much Brett had suffered in hospital all that time. Weird how many things are going to keep reminding me, but I guess it will always be that way.
I took him outside and resolved that we are NOT catching any more bugs.
But the bugs had not quite finished teaching me a lesson.
Later that same night I saw another lizard in the bathroom. Exactly the same and as alive as anything. I took it as a hopeful sign.
Then today as I was doing my Sunday pool backwash and chlorine I saw a ladybug in the weir. (We found all the other ladybugs in the pool too. So technically we saved them just to kill them again…)
Once I took it out the water I could see its wings were damaged. But undeterred it kept stretching them out to dry. One of the wings was bent too. I kept watching this bug, willing it to keep trying. And it did. It kept stretching and shaking it’s wings, until, about five minutes later, it took flight. I was so happy for this bug. But I was happy for me too. I have to keep trying too. And I will fly again.
So there you have it folks. Life and death lessons from bugs.
You will fly again Heather, you truly will! And Mother Nature will continue to remind you anytime you forget. Happy birthday!