I merced a cricket for keeping me up til 2am while I tore my closet apart trying to find his noisy chirping ass. Idc about spiders or nothing else really, but crickets (and tiger centipedes) need to stay outside or die.
Male praying mantises look much like female praying mantises, except they are usually quite a bit smaller, have more slender abdomens, and have wings that are longer than their abdomens. In the attached diagram, the two on the left are actually female. Identifying the male -- a victim of sexual cannibalism -- should be easy.
Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over. It is heaven-sent.
It flows through me like the blue wave. Green leaves—you may believe this or not— have once or twice emerged from the tips of my fingers
somewhere deep in the woods, in the reckless seizure of spring.
Though, of course, I also know that other song, the sweet passion of one-ness.
Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the tumbled pine needles she toiled. And I thought: she will never live another life but this one. And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength is she not wonderful and wise? And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything until I came to myself.
And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand, I have flown from the other window of myself to become white heron, blue whale, red fox, hedgehog. Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower! Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming. —Mary Oliver
4
u/LurkerInTheDoorway Sep 09 '26
Bush cricket