The Good, The Musical And The Bad Bug.

Hello peoples of the Internet and bugs of the world,

Last week, or maybe the week before, or it might be next week? Big Gunnar and me had found a nice and decent bench to sit on. At our age this can be the total plan for any day. We just wanted to sit there quetly together for a little while contemplating all that had been, which is a lot, and all that would come, which we do not, or something similar.

Anyway, we of course were interrupted in our exercise in doing nothing.

Big Gunnar being interrupted in doing seemingly nothing on the bench.

"It is strange." Big Gunnar said while we sat on the bench.

After a while I decided he really would not continue what he wanted to say without me asking, so I said:
"Yes, it truly is." I thought by saying this I might have put him of his balanse and he would ask me to ask him what in fact was strange, but it turned out he was thinking about the strangeness and did not really listen to me, so he just leaned forward and continued motivated by me answering something. I could probably have answered anything.

Big Gunnar leaning forward motivated to give his explanation on the strangeness.

"It is strange how one can be interrupted when one is doing nothing, and of what the interruptions actually are." He said.

When one have been friends for as long as we have it is easy to understand what the other is thinking of, because there were bugs and product of bugs all around us. I nevertheless said:
"But we like bugs, they are important, probably more than us humans."
"Not all bugs, still you are sort of correct in what you say, allow me to explain." Big Gunnar said. "We cannot stay on the bench forever, so I will just say something about three bugs we sort of are influenced by here on the bench now."

First you can see the web of a spider, how it reflects the sunlight. It is beautiful to look at and it helps in balancing nature. They have found spider webs as old as 140 million years. It is one of the strongest most sticky substances we know of and almost as unique as the bug that produces it. You have to be impressed by spiders. Some claim spiders are not bugs, but they are of course mostly wrong.

"Secondly do you hear that? I do not think you need to turn up your hearing aid machine to notice the musical hum from the bees? They make the sound with small almost hornlike tubes on the sides of their thorax. That means that they can then make that happy bee almost orchestral sound also without their wings. If you studied more you would also know such things." He gave me a patronizing but on the same time ironical look. "So they are not just extremely usefull in their pollination, they are also entertaining."

"And last but worst we have the Litter Bugs, us humans, look around the bench on which we are sitting."

Big Gunnar sitting on a bench surrounded by product of litterbugs.

I had to agree with him, it was a really sad view to look around us. People had been throwing all sorts of litter around the bench and it just seemed as everybody expected someone else to pick it up after them.
"So" Big Gunnar said. "We should not call ourselves bugs, not even litter bugs, because bugs are much better than that and do not deserve to be used in our negative namecalling of our selves."
I agreed with him, he had found the bad bug and besides sitting on the bench doing nothing we could suddenly do someting.

Ashamed and surrounded by beautiful spiderwebs and with the buzzing of other bugs in our ears we started picking up litter around our bench and other places nearby.

The walk home took a while because we found litter everywhere.

Big Gunnar is not very into carrying litter, so I had to do that, but he was highly involved in pointing where it was so I could pick it up.

Maybe you can study a bug without becoming one and you might just learn something usefull.
http://www.bumblebee.org/  is a nice page with bumble bee facts.
Have a nice week people!
F.W.G