Here, it is still warm…but I shall not dwell on that and things are buzzing with a kind of desperation that signals end of summer… nasty, cold, ache-inducing weather ahead. However, the garden, that all-embracing term we use for the mixture of tamed, quasi-tamed and utterly abandoned terrain we ‘own’… (we steward, in the scheme of things) still offers delights.
Two days ago, on a lavender bush outside my study window, I noticed a bit of ‘entomo-naughtiness’ going on. In fact, so involved were the protagonisti, one with the t’other that I was able to take out my white panel and set up… for a bit of voyeurism.
In a few of the many shots taken I noticed a particular female ‘gaze’ and, although anthropomorphism is to be avoided, I felt a caption might be in order. Mine is below the image… feel free to add your own, anything publishable we will leave up as comment!
“Text me when you've started big boy”
Whatever human males may seek to convince themselves about their innate superiority, females have long realised that, for most males, the brain migrates south during puberty and remains below the equator. We males, it seems, are hopelessly (even helplessly) led by ‘lead’… that misnamed graphite which may be said to be (hopefully) present in the proverbial ‘pencil’. And, all sorts of stupid risks are taken… but none (I trust) in the human world involve the danger to life, limb and cranium that faces the male of the praying mantis (Mantis religiosa) in pursuit of ‘true love’… the term given to that numbing of all rationale thought by utter subjugation to a chemical cocktail: pheromones, nothing stronger… more devastating even than Newcastle Brown to a passionate Geordie.
Most of us have had our heads bitten off in the metaphorical sense for no better reason than we exist (don’t argue, that is good enough!) but here may I quote a caption from Michael Chinnery’s excellent Collins Pocket Guide to Insects of Britain and Western Europe ? Those of a sensitive and/or prurient disposition might look away NOW….
“A male mantis has already lost his head but continues to pump sperm into the female as she devours him”
NO, I am not making it up it is on page 62.
This male mantis (the smaller, thinner one with the longer antennae) kept his head in the best sense of the term....
… Sometimes the blandness of ‘scientific prose’ is unbeatable. For decades, I have managed to get away with ‘pure filth’ when describing orchid pollination using the correct terminology: I remember one venerable lady tapping (nay thumping) her hearing aid in disbelief (delight?) in the front row of a talk I gave in deepest Dorset many moons ago. Happy days!
‘Hurry up, it is nearly lunchtime’
We have to be quick, the wife thinks I’m training and Sir Alex thinks I’m with the physio!
Funny Paul
But I too had noticed that very footnote in that book but never felt able to share it with anyone. Good for him for getting it past the publisher. I have recently referred to the “blankety bogs of Sutherland” in the context of the tax break for planting trees that was exploited in the 1980′s by, amongst others, Terry Wogan, formerly of “Blankety Blank” fame. Will be interested to see if the magazine publishes what I’ve written!
My best
Niall
Agree completely. It is a lovely book where Michael Chinnery has performed an amazing job in selecting the insects one might come across in much of Europe. And that comment is just what happens…QED, finito, done. My suggestion to look away was tongue in cheek (nudge nudge, know what I mean vicar? I have had such fun with orchid biology… If such phrases or an image offends then we are doomed. I have some very obvious shots of pripaic little figures in close-ups of monkey, man and other orchids. But then I speak as someone who finds that the only thing that ‘offends’ me is the idea of ‘taking offence’ – such a pathetic stance. Get out there and fight back!
Mind, one or two mantis captions did cross my twisted mind that I felt it better not to suggest!
Some people are ridiculously prurient – I was irritated when someone removed the term ‘botanical necrophile’ I had used to describe (light-heartedly) herbarium botanists from a piece I wrote for an orchid magazine. I first used it decades ago and have seen it many times since. I gave a choice – put it back or the article does not get published. The person concerned had been placed on an editorial panel and thus felt obliged to exercise his/her judgement (or lack of it) – a little power and all that!
Getting editors who are tainted with PC tendencies is a bind but one ought to share their utterances with others. Mockery might be the only course, short of a lobotomy – though in one or two cases that has been done already, I think.
I kept getting problems with Jew’s ear fungus which has had the latin name Auricularia auricula-judae since Linnaeus originally classified it. American editors have deemed it non PC and I have gently tried to explain that this is how it is known and that to suppress such things is to mollify the way anti-semitism was (and still is in some quarters) something that permeated all walks of life. In fact, on airing this in front of Jewish friends they took a much more robust attitude, dismissing the US view. But then from the same source at one stage came the question “Do I translate 35mm into imperial measure for our market….”
Maybe if you used the term Wogan Wetland then there might be cause for legal concern but I suspect no-one will note the irony and simply take off the “y’ thinking you hit the wrong key….
Paul