Gulag Zen

My wife has a bit of a flair for the dramatic. Years of chronic drug abuse have left her emotionally unbalanced. This morning, I woke to find her standing fully clothed at the foot of the bed.

“I”, she said, fixing me with an unnervingly level stare, “am going out!”

“What’s up? Have we run out of milk?”

“No. I am going out. For the day. Alone.”

“But what abou….”

“I”, she cut in, “am going now.”

“Are you taking the ki…”

“ALONE!” her voice cracked like a whip and she was gone.

It’s the small things that count (part 4)

My quick post on the small, many legged creatures of the South African bush has turned into a four part monster, and I’m only scratching the surface! I had hoped to get the little things out of the way quickly, so I could move on to cooler things with much bigger teeth, but in doing so discovered that I am actually rather fond of the creepy crawlies. The thing with cool, big toothed creatures is that you have to go out and find them. To get to the little stuff, all you have to do is step outside. Sometimes, they come inside to find you!

It’s the small things that count. (Part 2)

This is the second half (or even third) of an article I was doing on the creepy crawlies of the South African lowveld. A wise man once told me that no-one likes to read long posts. Apparently I can only write long posts. Cutting them up into pieces is the best solution I can come up with. If you’re interested, you can find part 1 here https://23thorns.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/226/.

In part 1, I looked at some of the nice creepy crawlies. Yes, there really are such things. Now that we’ve got all the cute stuff out of the way, though, we can get on to more exciting things.

Reputable scientists have divided the arthropods into several distinct groups. We’ve already covered the “cute and cuddly” group. I’m going to start this post with the “You will soil yourself and never sleep again” group. These are the creatures which will terrify you, but won’t actually hurt you (unless you classify inducing a stroke as hurting you).