This morning a poem popped into my head for no good reason other than there's so much empty space to fill up there:



"Bugly"

    Some wild critters give us the jitters

    Among them are spiders and snakes.

    When many folks see'em,

    They'd just as soon flee'em,

    Or whack'em with shovels and rakes.



    The sight of the spider who sat down beside her

    Scared Little Miss Muffet away

    And Adam and Eve

    were ordered to leave

    When a serpent induced them to stray



    So spiders and snakes can give us the shakes

    There's just something creepy about'em

    But we should understand

    That it's just Nature's plan

    And we'd miss'em if we were without'em.



Well, some of us would, anyway.  I have to admit a certain fear of spiders and snakes myself, although my curiosity has a habit of overcoming that fear.  I'll make a mental note to find out more about the creature in question.  Then, upon further examination and later study, that fear turns to fascination.

When it comes to nature's oddities, what are we afraid of? Is it that a spider always looks like it's about to creep up your leg using eight spindly legs of its own?  Is it that snakes move so quickly without a leg to stand on?  Should you ever want to see something truly amazing, watch a snake climb a tree.

If you've ever been patient enough to watch a spider spin an entire web, I bet your first impression of disliking the insect turned to admiration by the time the web was done.  To watch that spectacle unfold is almost miraculous.  The infinite patience the little guy shows is remarkable.  The intricate design it weaves without a blueprint is admirable. That the fine strands it uses to make its web are stronger than steel is certainly impressive.

Did you know that in World War Two, one of America's most closely guarded secrets was the Norden Bomb Sight, used in planes like the B-17 to help give the Allied forces their victory.  The Norden's heart belonged to a spider, because American workers actually learned how to take apart a spider's web to use the strands to make the sight's cross hairs.

The title of the above poem is defined as a conflation. That's when you take two words and combine them with a bit of alteration to make a single word.  I combined "bug" and "Ugly" to make "bugly."  We do this all the time in English.  A popular word in this neck of the woods is "flustrated," a delightful combination of "flustered" and "frustrated."

Another common conflation is "brunch," formed by combining "breakfast" and "lunch."

"Smog" combines "smoke" and "fog" except on "The Beverly Hillbillies," where it refers to a "small hog."

The other day I visited a friend and encountered another of nature's creepy beauties.  On the storm door window at the entrance to my friend's home was a member of the Phasmatodea order of insects. In this case, what fascinated my friend and me was an eight inch long insect commonly called a "walking stick."  It was from observing this creature that the conflation "bugly" crossed my mind.

Surely the walking stick-- Shirley if it was a female-- is among the least attractive specimens to be found in the wild.  Of course, they're darn hard to find because, like chameleons and cuttlefish, they are masters of disguise.  It was only because this one was walking across glass that we noticed it.

Phasmids like the walking stick are part of an enormous group of similar bugs.  Some have elongated bodies that resemble a stick with legs.  Others have flattened bodies that look like a fallen leaf.  Some of them have wings.  Others are flightless.  They are found around the world and, for all their apparent fragility, are quite a hardy species.

A few are capable of secreting a substance from their metathorax (Bad conflation: I never metathorax that wasn't round) that can cause temporary blindness in attackers.  Walking sticks feed on the leaves of trees and shrubs.  The females, who are typically a lot bigger than males, can lay from 100 to 1200 eggs after mating.

Camouflage starts early in this crowd.  Even the eggs are disguised to look like plant seeds.  While the eggs may not hatch for a season or more, when they do the "babies," called "nymphs," are born looking like miniature copies of adults.

My friend and I spent considerable time observing this walking stick, and although neither of us thought it a beautiful creature, we did admire that it lives at all in such an odd body.  I don't know how well the phasmid's eyes work.  It could be possible that as it observed us it was thinking: "Look at those two "creeple," conflating us from creepy people into an insect put down.  As my beekeeping friend James Foster might say: It just goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the bee holder.  By the way, if you ever wondered where Noah stashed his pair of bees, they were kept in the ark-hives.  I guess I better buzz off for now.