Day 199 - Big Buggers

big bug

I got an early bonus picture, first thing this morning, when I came across this big fella lurking under my desk...

I can't quite ID him, some kind of Ground Beetle...perhaps Carabus problematicus?  He was certainly a big bugger, maybe an inch for his abdomen and another half an inch for thorax and head.

In the bottom middle of the photo, you can see a coarse black dog hair...I realise it's not brilliant as a scale reference, but it's all I have - I only got a couple of shots before he caught on to me and went running off behind the bin, never to be seen again.  

So far...he's still hiding under there somewhere, with the vole that Loz released under my desk on Sunday...never saw that again, after if went under the desk...that's going to be quite an operation, retrieving the body, if he dies under there somewhere.

Fingers crossed that both of them somehow find an escape route and get back out where they belong.

In the meantime, I'll keep my slippers on - just the other night, Anna was severely mauled by a marauding beetle (not Ringo), which bit her on the foot just because she nearly squished it to death ('scuse the technical jargon...). 

This one's a biggie though, he might have your leg off!

Speaking of biggies, I have it on good authority that "that big black crow thing" (one of the ravens) has been mugging the jackdaws that congregate in our gardens around the bird feeders early each morning. 

They make a lot of noise, apparently, but I sleep like the dead, so even though this is apparently going on 5m from our open bedroom window, I've not heard a thing. 

Still, I'll take the camera upstairs just in case I should happen to waken around dawn...he pins them to the ground and gives them a bit of a beating, so I've been told...

Ok, so it's far from a reliable source, but there would be no reason to just make up a story like that!

I heard the raven cronking in the tree just over the road, earlier this evening...he's got a much deeper cronk than in that recording - I reckon he's a big bugger even amongst his own kind...

Anyway, I thought I might get a better close up:

no big bugger

But I didn't...although I quite like the look of the tree that he's hiding in...it looks resplendent in the evening sunshine.

I didn't spot the raven at all, and Anna said it flew off whilst I was nattering to my neighbour Dave. 

Encouraging that he's around and about though...I'll keep my ears tuned for his distinctive deep rasp, see if I can't catch him bullying the jackdaws...

I do like him, but not if he's going to be mean!

:-/

STOP PRESS

By incredible coincidence, and entirely a propos of the subject of tonight's blog, Anna just called me upstairs to grab a photo of this amazing little (big!) beauty:

the queen hornet

She is a hornet, probably a queen, and was quite simply gigantic.  She does look a little like a male, but much bigger than any hornet I've ever seen...the window frame she's clinging to is around an inch wide...she was probably 1.5 inches in length or more.

Hornets are very docile creatures, so there was nothing to be afraid of.  She'd somehow found her way on to our landing and was stuck on the windowsill.  

After grabbing a few snaps, I ushered her out onto the ivy, where I hope she'll be ok. 

We'll know if she comes in the house anyway - their buzz is so low pitched, they're like a big, slow bomber plane, compared to the zippy little jet fighter planes that are wasps.   It's like a chinook just flew into the bedroom, when they occasionally find their way through an open bedroom window. 

They are several times the size of the common wasp, and they really have a drone to match...as soon as you hear it, you just know it's big.

She has fantastic big brown eyes:

brown eyed girl

What a rare, late treat that was!!

B-)

Day 115 - The Thought That Counts

you lookin' at me?

I think they're talking about me...they are, aren't they?  Damned jackdaws!

Paranoia...why am I talking about that, eh?!  You saying I'm paranoid??

The fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that the world isn't out to get me, you know!

Seriously though, I don't suffer from paranoia at all...but I see a lot of it about.  So many people are weighed down by negative mindsets, in a quagmire of insecurity, fear and doubt, embroiled in the self fulfilment of victimhood.  

The more paranoid among us breed the perfect conditions for us to have reason to feel paranoid.  Treat others with mistrust and suspicion, and they soon tire of it and start to exclude us, so feeding our paranoia further...

A neat little system, designed to create supporting evidence for our low self esteem and lack of self worth, to prove ourselves right, and so validate our self abuse.

I do understand the pitfalls of such thinking - I was young and depressed and paranoid, once upon a time. 

But I learned that I am not a victim of the world...more likely the world is a victim of me (me being a 21st century human male, and a middle aged caucasian at that...surely the most ecologically disastrous, indulgently over-rewarded demographic there is!)

Yet my circumstances do not make me Who I Am...that which goes on around me is not happening to me, it's just happening.  I am free, in each successive moment, to be Who I Am, despite what's happening around me.  

You can slap me in the face, figuratively or literally, and I can smile and forgive you.

Don't get me wrong, I may not smile and forgive you - but it is an option that's available to me.   To pretend otherwise is to deny that I am master of myself (my self), that I am more than an automaton, that I have free will.

I'm not suggesting it's easy...it isn't.  It takes effort, and determination, and self belief...and as much as any of those, practise and time. 

But it is possible to be master and director of your own mind, to favour thoughts that you proactively choose to think.  

At some point, you may also realise that it's not the world around you that makes you unhappy, but the thoughts you think about the world around you.  If I say something mean to you, the reality is just a few vibrations in the air passing across your ear...how could it hurt you?  It's your mental and emotional reaction to my words that creates the pain and discomfort in you.  

The way you feel at any moment is less a reflection of the world around you, as a reflection of the thoughts you are having about the world around you.

As Anais Nin so succinctly put it;

We don't see things the way they are.  We see things the way we are.

Now, if you accept that in this sense at least, it's the thought that counts, then soon you may realise the potential of this phenomena:

If your unhappiness is due to the thoughts in your head, and you are master and director of the thoughts in your head...then why not choose to think only those thoughts that lead you to feel better, and importantly, choose not to think those thoughts that make you feel worse...or feel afraid, or suspicious...or mistrusting, or jealous...or doubtful, or insecure, or depressed, or paranoid.

Choose not to think the thoughts, and you can stop feeling the negative feelings.

I'm not suggesting that this can be true for everyone, all the time...but it is possible for all of us to do it, some of the time...

And in that time, we will be happy...

;-)