The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Other creatures in our world
The dried chestnuts looked undamaged in their husk, but three groups of weevil grubs surely left some damage behind:
Gingerly prying the seeds out revealed holes in all three:
The weevils converted the nut meat into what looks like solid frass:
Having eaten themselves out of house and home, they moved on to the next plane of existence.
For most of them, that would be bird food.
We found an industrious spider below one of the living room windows, tucked behind the furniture:
Considering the number of husks and the defunct fly, the spider has been eating like a king for quite a while.
It’s now in the flower garden by the patio, which may not be quite as good a location but definitely increases net happiness.
Spotted on a recent trip past the Capital Region Welcome Center, one of the banners seemed quite unlike the others:
Maybe if we were dog people, it’d be less offputting.
Puts me in mind of being So Poughkeepsie.
I spotted this little gadget chugging steadily across a table in the living room:
Nearby, two of its friends / siblings / clones remained near their landing craft:
They’re about 5 mm long and, although there are no larva-size holes visible in the chestnuts tucked inside the burr, that’s definitely where they started their journey.
A few hours later, the rest of the crew bailed out:
The exit hole must be on a nut under the curve of the husk, but they’re sufficiently squishy to wriggle their way out. The little brown dot over on the left belongs to the top larva of a pair queued in the exit corridor:
I lost count at 18. There’s surely more where they came from, so I replaced the plate with a bowl to reduce the quantum tunneling probability.
In an ideal world, they’d grow up to be chestnut weevils, but I put them out near the suet feeder and, a few hours later, my offering was accepted.
After not seeing any Praying Mantis activity in the Butterfly Bush for a few days, I discovered our armored hunter in the nearby decorative grass:
The appendages at the tip of her abdomen were spread to the sides and her whole body moved in small circles, although I couldn’t get a good view of the proceedings. Building an ootheca apparently requires concerted effort, as she was still hard at work when dusk fell.
This critter took up residence in our kitchen window:
She’s between the outer storm window and the inner sash, having secured her funnel web to both panes across the entire width of the window. We’d opened the storm window to clear an air conditioner vent and spiders know a good location when they see it.
We know she’s female, because a (smaller) male appeared and conducted negotiations for the better part of an afternoon. After she accepted his offer of a small, somewhat battered, moth, the two hooked up for the rest of the day; we feared for his life, but he hung around until the next afternoon, then departed.
She normally stays tucked inside the channel running along the edge of the window frame, with only the tips of those two front legs visible, and retreats at the slightest vibration, so we’ll leave her in peace until we must close the storm window.
The Praying Mantis in the Butterfly Bush is definitely female:
I’d noticed her distended abdomen a day or two earlier, when it was highlighted in the sun and pulsing slowly. The indentations under the male’s legs shows the surface is definitely softer than the hard chitin of most insect armor:
The tip of the male’s abdomen twisted around to make contact, but I have no idea what all the little doodads common to both of them back there were doing.
The whole process started in mid-afternoon, they were still locked together six hours later, and the male was gone in the morning. The stories about female mantises eating the males seem greatly exaggerated, but she did manage to catch and eat a moth while otherwise engaged.
We’ll keep watch for ootheca on the tall grasses again, although we’ll never know the rest of their story.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 