39 Crawling
Teddy and I were in the garden, under the dappled shade of the old tree, escaping the sun’s heat for a few minutes and refreshing ourselves with cool lemonade. A sudden breeze made the shadows dance and ruffled the grass, and we laughed with the sheer joy of it. Then Teddy’s bright eye caught sight of something, there in the grass, something crawling with jerky but determined movements. It was time for a lesson.
“Get down… right down… on your belly… That’s it! Lie on the grass, or the path, or the bare earth, and you will see wonders!
“Look there! A line of ants, all carrying food back to the nest. Each carries a load that is a mere crumb to us, hardly worth the effort of scooping them up and knocking them back in a single mouthful; certainly we wouldn’t eat them one by one. Yet those crumbs are heavy burdens for the ants, some many times larger than the insects themselves, and carried in their jaws. See that pair; they are carrying an extra-large piece between them. They all march on, never breaking the line, never putting down their loads to rest, creeping under leaves and clambering over blades of grass, until they reach the entrance to the nest. And there they go, through the dark opening to where our eyes cannot follow them.”
It is amazing what you can see when you just change perspective. Now that we were down there, we could see that we were surrounded by many creatures, each a marvel in its own right.
“What else can we see, today? There! Between the branches of that bush – a spider’s web. We can only see it clearly because we are at just the right angle. A breeze moves the stems and leaves, and the web moves with them, holding its shape, never breaking. If you look closely, you can see the thread that anchors it to the ground. Now, where is the owner of this miraculous structure? She isn’t in the centre, legs splayed out, waiting for the twitch of a fly caught in the threads. Ah! That’s because she has already caught her dinner. Over to the right, almost at the edge of the web… See her, now? The black dot that was her victim has almost completely disappeared under her shrouds of silk. I wonder what sort of creature it was?”
But there was no time to investigate further, for the next lesson was on its way.
“I can hear our next visitor! Buzz-zz, buzz-zz… Where is it? Oh, I see it now, diving head first into that flower, ecstatically drinking the nectar. The bees really love those flowers; there are at least five different kinds on them. That really fat one is almost completely black; only a couple of thin yellow stripes. But the honey bee there is more of a golden brown colour, with darker brown bands. Are there any that have the ‘classic’ black and yellow bands, I wonder? Don’t get too close; if they get upset they’ll sting, and if they sting they die. The world needs bees! Now, can you see the yellow blobs on that one’s legs? That’s pollen. They take that and the nectar back to the hive; in return, they pollinate all the flowers they visit. Fantastic creatures.”
Before I could start thinking too much of honey and then food, a flash of red caught our attention. We followed it to the rose bush where it landed and became a ladybird.
“Ah, another gardener’s friend! It’ll clear up some of those aphids for us. They’re ferocious hunters, you know? I don’t use chemicals in this garden, either to kill or to grow. Compost for the soil, because healthy plants are more resistant anyway. And then I rely on visitors like this ladybird to clear up the pests. Well, it’s we who call them pests. The ladybird only sees its next meal! So, actually, a garden that’s good for aphids is good for ladybirds. What a curious thought; I’ve never seen it like that before. This change in perspective has a lot going for it.”
But we had no time for further speculation that day because it was time for tea.