Cicadas out of a Square Notebook
Mood:  smelly
Topic: Insecta

Coleoptera LP swings around with mesquite shrimp in the parlor of chilled communications
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Insecta



life-sized

Chinese Hornets
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: from China Daily (by Huang Zhiling)
Topic: Insecta


HENGDU: Swarms of hornets in Southwest China have killed at least 10 in a plague experts say may have been brought by the overuse of pesticides.

A teacher at the Chengdu Sports Institute in Sichuan Province, Deng Sheng, still winces at the memory of being attacked in Suining, a city in southern Sichuan, last Saturday.

As he parked his car, the vehicle hit a tree, apparently angering a swarm of the 3 centimetre-long insects which descended on Deng.

"I was so scared that I got back in the car straight away. But I had already been stung on the head," he said.

In excruciating pain, Deng rushed to the nearby Suining Municipal People's Hospital, where he was shocked to learn that more than 10 people in the area have died from hornet stings this year.

Wang Haijun, a young farmer in Chuanshan District of Suining, is still in hospital after being stung by hornets last Wednesday.

"I bumped into a tree and suddenly countless hornets poured down and chased me as I was trying to run home. I fainted by the door," he recalled.

Wang's sister believes the hornets treated her brother as their enemy, adding that they did not fly away until he fainted and lay motionlessly on the ground.

Zhao Dechun, chief of the Internal Department of Suining Municipal People's Hospital, said he was surprised by the recent spate of hornet attacks. In the past month, his hospital has treated 25 hornet sting victims, he said.

According to Pu Zhengrong, an official with the Suining Fire Department, his team has received nearly 70 calls asking for help to remove hornets' nests. "Each time after we receive a call, we get rid of several nests," he said.

"Because it is such a serious problem, our team set up a seven-member group to get rid of hornets' nests in July," he said.

Experts say hornets do not normally attack people. However, overuse of pesticides, eliminating hornets' natural enemies, could be responsible for an explosion in the hornet population.

In autumn, when people disturb hornets by picking fruit or collecting medicinal herbs, the insects may regard them as a threat, prompting an attack, said Fei Lisong, a zoologist at Chengdu Zoo.

Mood:  suave
Topic: Insecta


Molly's plants are safe i watered them last night
i have made a watering schedule which includes

birds of paradise aloes cactus and jasmine

little known skinks of the world
Mood:  bright
Topic: Insecta

the hands of a child need to be washed this instant, this instant wash that child's hands, handling the turtle, that can lead to salmonella, the yellow cup of turtle food, the green label, Tetramin, I think it was called, which comes from Petland, which is all blonde wood up front, acquariums in the back, acquariums with the newts, the fire-bellied newts of yore oh how easily I am infected by reptiles, even amphibians, how many books did i read called reptiles and amphibians, why can't they come up with new names for those books, like the little known skinks of the world or chasing down the hog-nosed snake, fish moccasins and soft-shell turtles, someone could write an encyclopedia of soft shell turtles and i would buy it because they are so shy, almost as shy as the blue-tailed skinks that live in the cement and bricks and leafmeal that I too live in so that if I weren't five feet tall, i would need to wave to the skink, to say hello because our passing was that common, common enough for courtesy and truly i felt this same affection for the paper wasps that lined my parents' lanterns with their nests and even found time to make paper in the boat beached on the grass of the front lawn which i would infrequently take into the tunnel of trees overlapping the water and look for things in the water where the missionary used to live, can you imagine a missionary pulling your teeth, this missionary was also a dentist, so now you know why I asked that, he saw me peeing in the bushes once while he rode his bike by, he was such a fit missionary, a tennis player, where we had to watch what we said when we missed because the missionary was on the next court over, no mcenroe today, no, what a day for a missionary to play tennis, what gives saith the Lord