Insects Inspire Designers

Time for confession: I’m a female missing the fashion gene. While I love creativity, I prefer to wear plain jeans and t-shirts. Ironically, I sometimes watch What Not to Wear, but I’d drive Stacy and Clinton insane. I don’t always like the designs and patterns they convince the person-in-need- of-improvement to buy. Although I don’t always like the styles these fashionistas promote, I love interesting looking insects.

Since I began lugging a camera everywhere I go, I’m on the lookout for photographic subjects. I’ve snapped pics of squirrels and bunnies on morning walks until I have a full folder. I wanted something different--something fun to manipulate with editing software. My mom always said be careful what you ask for, which might be true in this case. I began noticing bugs--not just common creatures, but fantastic special-effects quality insects. Not only did I spot them, but also they let me take photos from various angles so I could use software to play with their appearance. 

Squirrels and bunnies are cute, but it’s hard to make their pictures unique. They’re good for an aw, how cute, and that’s it. Insects, on the other hand, have interesting parts.  Sometimes their wings constructions rival the windows in majestic European cathedrals. In addition, their mouths and antennae are often complex enough to crop into interesting compositions that  display only that body part.

After paying close attention to these overlooked critters that share my neighbhorhood, I’m certain their coloration and design configurations would delight the WNTW duo. They’d be over the moon when they saw the striking black on white of a cottonwood borer. If they looked at this creature under a microscope to note the white was actually fine hair, they’d want to reproduce the positive/negative relationship as well as the texture into a garment one of their clients would model. I can see Stacy capturing the sheen of the legs and antenna in a stylish handbag or fashion boot.

Dragonflies might also inspire creativity in New York’s garment district. First, using the array of jewel-tones on these insects would brighten clothing racks in every national clothing chain. Even I would buy dragonfly blue or ruby-hued shirts to top my denims. Recently, a coral, cream, and brown species skimmed ahead of me. As I watched it dance lightly above waving brome grass, I imagined buying sheets and a comforter capturing those warm colors.

A cicada isn’t as delicate or lovely as a dragonfly, but it’s worth examining closely. With unaided vision, I saw only dull green and black. However, its intricate wings looked like fine leaded glass. When I magnified my picture, hints of crimson, topaz, emerald, and sapphire emerged, making a bejeweled Hollywood monster. Tiffany glass manufacturers would   gladly claim the wings.

Forget buying current fabric designs. After seeing what some of the bugs in my neighborhood wear, I know they’d make the staff of What Not to Wear do a happy dance. Even I’d go shopping for more stylish duds. 

The Force: Music

It’s interesting how certain tunes and lyrics transport our minds from the present to another time and place. I can’t listen to “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” without finding myself traveling backward through time to age fifteen when I rode shotgun up and down the main drag of a small southwest Kansas town. With our windows rolled down, summer breezes riffled our hair until a comb could hardly pass through it. Oncoming drivers blared horns to greet one another as part of the nightly ritual. These discordant sounds disrupted KOMA tunes that established the rhythm of our popping bubble gum.

To this day, listening to oldies triggers an out of body experience for me. It’s impossible to believe more than four decades have passed since those notes first burned their way into memory, making a recording more permanent than any 8- track tape or vinyl disc that spun round and round on a turntable. Every one of those songs is a treasure trove of almost forgotten sensory experience: sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.

Though I’ve been happily married for nearly forty years, I can’t listen to the Moody Blues sing “Nights in White Satin” without thinking of every broken heart I ever survived. Oddly, I don’t think it’s the words that elicit those memories. That wavering, haunting melody plucks my emotions as if they were strings on a big old Irish harp, leaving me wrung out and raw as if a break up just happened.

It isn’t just old rock songs that have this effect on me. Sitting in church on Sunday morning listening to “Rock of Ages” or “How Great Thou Art” carries me back to five- year-old me perched next to my Grandma in the pew. I feel the remembered warmth of morning sun coming through emerald, crimson, and amethyst stained glass that depicted Bible stories I was learning in Sunday school. I smell my Grandma’s floral scent and see her hands holding a worn hymnal. I hear her tremulous voice singing those beloved words. When I hear those hymns, she’s with me still.

A song that distances me from my own lifetime is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I can’t listen to its arresting rhythm without tears filling my eyes. As its notes wash over me, the stanzas send chills up my spine. I envision tent-lined camps filled with homesick, scared young men fighting for life and country. I see them sitting around flickering cook fires, running roughened fingers over pages in treasured Bibles, seeking comfort and strength for whatever was coming. I see lightning and hear trumpets. Juliet Ward Howe’s imagery turns me to jelly every time I hear it.

The same thing happens when I hear “Oh, Danny Boy.” The words and music capture the sorrow of every Irish mother and lover that sent her man into battle or off to America seeking a better life. I don’t know of a more poignant combination of lyrics and melody. If someone plays it on the bagpipes, I’m a goner. No one carries enough tissue to sop up my tears.

Music is a powerful force. It reminds us of who we were and inspires us to be more than we are. 

 

Fireflies Looking for Love

            A hip-jutting, bold-shouldered posture made famous by actor James Dean, a flick of a hand through hair, extended eye contact, and a lingering second glance suggest a human’s interest in romance. Researchers have written entire books about body language people use when they want to hook up.

Not surprisingly, other species’ signals read just as obviously. In this region, we watch the spring strut where male turkeys fan tails and rattle feathers to attract hens. In a few remote locales, you might spy a prairie chicken dancing and booming to catch the eye and ear of his ladylove. Sitting outside on a summer eve, you hear nearby frogs trilling and croaking love songs to woo female amphibians.

On warm June and July nights, love is everywhere, even in the fireflies flitting about my backyard. Recently, I discovered these insects’ blinkers flash in search of romance. These light--then dark--then light beacons that enthrall me have everything to do with reproduction and nothing to do with my delight in their strobe effect. A little research helped me understand how fireflies control their lights. 

A scientist mentioned this insect’s ability to glow involves the chemical nitric oxide, which coincidentally helps control human heartbeats and memories. It’s interesting that a chemical that brightens a summer night also has something to do with maintaining brain cells that replay movies of times past. Humans may not glow and flash as fireflies do, but the elemental bond they share with this charming insect plays a critical role in their well-being.

It also intrigued me to learn that the two hundred species of fireflies each have unique signals that differentiate them from another variety of firefly. Using their specifically designed beacons, they attract appropriate mates. This is critical, considering the short time they have to find a partner.

While I’ve enjoyed fireflies for years, I didn’t realize their nightly Morse code involved propagation of their species. Those tiny flickers are nature’s way to make sure my favorite summertime insect continues to exist. In addition to discovering fireflies use their flashers to look for love, I also learned they spend two years in a larval state. In contrast to this long incubation, they exist for only two weeks in their beetle/firefly stage. It’s during this short period that they mate and lay eggs, according to a Tufts University study.

 Two weeks is not much time to start a family. Finding this out makes me feel guilty for the years I collected fireflies in glass jars to admire in a dark bedroom and for the summers I allowed our daughters to enjoy this childhood ritual. Though we released our insects the following morning, we reduced their baby making opportunities. 

This information has created a new resolve at this house. Those glowing bugs can have their whole beetle stage to find love and make more nighttime wonders. From now on, I won’t interfere in their romances. However, knowing these facts makes me feel like I invade their privacy when I watch their summer light shows.

  

              

Imagine Going into Battle with a Song as Your Weapon

If you tune into the news, you’ll see people and nations disputing boundaries. These disagreements may involve guns, artillery, and bombs, or they may be legal wars that wind their way through courtrooms for years before anyone gets a definitive answer regarding who owns what. Since the beginning of time, humans have wrangled over property lines. After watching two male cardinals duke it out last week, I’ve decided people ought to settle their differences the way birds do—with song.

As a kid, I thought birds sang because they were happy. When I grew up, I learned they generally sing to attract mates or to establish and defend territory. Scientists who study such behaviors can tell you exactly how many tunes an individual species sings. According to one observer, brown thrashers produce 2,000 different songs while the Henslow sparrow has a repertoire of only one. That’s a lot of watching and recording to determine what’s going on in the bird world. 

In North America, we hear mostly male birds because they typically initiate courting behavior and establish or defend territory. Researchers discovered that playing a recording of another male house wren’s song triggers hostile behavior in listening wrens. They also know that if they remove these guys from their native habitat and play recorded territorial songs, a transplanted bird rarely invades the new region. The other fella’s melody establishes clear boundaries without bloodshed or violence.

Recently, I saw this in action. While rambling about town, I heard competing cardinals calling back and forth across a street. I’ve wanted to photograph these scarlet beauties so I stopped to look for the source of the racket. One chap hid among the leaves of a tall tree while his opponent clung defiantly to a wire strung between telephone poles as they hurled insults back and forth. 

As I watched, their volume increased. If bird body language is anything like that of humans, the creature on the line was agitated. He wanted that other guy GONE. I observed their trilling for five minutes until I realized their duel could go on all day. I returned the next morning to see if the warbling warriors were still sparring, but silence reigned over the neighborhood. The feud ended without a single casualty.

While I finished that morning stroll, I had much to consider. What if humans sorted out their differences through song? Would folks like me who can’t carry a tune but possess a loud voice have an advantage? Would others give in to shut us up? Maybe the contest would be like TV shows where celebrities declare a winner.

In the human world, I’m sure a third party would settle the issue, but I’m uncertain whether scientists know how birds determine a victor. They only know that birds select mates and settle territorial conflicts through song. 

It makes me wonder what John Lennon thought about as he wrote these lyrics, “There’s nothing to kill or die for” in his song “Imagine.” Perhaps he too watched birds settle differences by trilling memorable tunes and imagined settling disputes without violence.