Welcome to the Cloud Forest

I wrote this last Sunday:

Yesterday as I rinsed paintbrushes in the outdoor sink at school I moved dead leaves away from the drain and found the three-inch long water logged body of a huge bug. I thought it was a cockroach and moved slowly away from it. Kyle, one of my third graders, was very excited and picked it up to show us. I stood behind Noelle. Turns out its not a cockroach, but a long horned beetle. We know this because Kyle’s dad is a guide/naturalist. He also told us that the long horned beetle’s antennae come out of its eyes and if you were to pick it up while it was alive it would squeak. If this long horned beetle were alive we’d have to be careful to hold it right behind the head or it would bite us. It is not poisonous, but does have pinchers that can cut through your skin. Oh yeah, and it has spikes on its back and two antennae that are longer than its body.

Knowing that it is not alive and not a cockroach Tedi, my co-teacher, and I grew bolder. Tedi ran to get her camera so she can take pictures of the beetle in Kyle’s hand to show how large it is. Noelle wished out loud that the beetle’s body were not waterlogged so she could take it back to her pre-K classroom in D.C. I wanted macro pictures of the long horned beetles spikes, pinchers, antennae and fur. I picked up the soggy carcass and carried it home. By the time we got to my cabin it was too dark to take good pictures so I set the beetle body on the porch railing for tomorrow.

This morning I wake up with the sun. The rain was pounding my window and the wind was ripping through the trees and I could not sleep any more. At 5:45 I climb out of bed to climb into the hammock. I see the long horned beetle perched on the rail and remember the close up pictures I wanted. I go back inside, grab my camera and return to the beetle.

The dead long horned beetle, which I carried in my bare hand for ten minutes and welcomed into my home, is moving. Its long, delicate abdomen is pulsing, undulating. Up, down, up, down. Up. Down. Its antennae are wiggling. Well, that’s a surprise. I slowly move closer to investigate the possibility of taking pictures of a live-but-dazed long horned beetle but stop short. Underneath the rail where the beetle is slowly waking up is a two-inch scorpion. I pause, and then take a picture from two feet away with the zoom.
Welcome to the Cloud Forest.


p.s. – note to self: don’t spend all morning looking at and writing about creatures with an exoskeleton and then eat crunchy granola for breakfast. You may know that you are not munching on long horned beetles and scorpions, but its really hard to relax.







(This post was made possible by HAPPY MACHINE. Thanks for the help.)