Stumbling Upon Miracles

A few days ago, Jim McCormac posted his find of a transforming lyric cicada in West Virginia- an amazing encounter and equally superb photographs by Jim.  I was inspired.  In the comments for Jim's post, filmmaker Opposable Chums queried "how DO you manage to stumble upon these miracles?".  I know how Jim does it- he is constantly looking for these types of very things- and let me tell you, he's not stumbling.

A few weeks ago I was walking out of the Cedar lodge at Batelle Darby Metropark with  Jim after the evening programs.  I'm chatting with him as I walked down the sidewalk and suddenly I realize he wasn't there anymore.  He stopped outside the door, in the twilight hours, and was checking out the hundreds of insects that had been attracted to the porch light.  I completely blew by the light- I wasn't in nature mode.  But Jim was- he is constantly looking for Nature's miracles.

Today, Megan, Weston and I attended the Ohio State Fair and Weston led me to a small miracle.  We targeted a shady area by a little leaf linden to let him out of the stroller and burn some energy.  After a round of chasing daddy around the tree, Weston picked up sticks and was hitting them against the bark of the tree trunk.  

As I was watching him do this, I discovered a shed cicada larval exoskeleton clinging to the tree.  I gave it to Weston, but he didn't recognize it as anything more than a dead leaf.  Soon after he discarded it, I realized that there were several more exoskeletons- and that two freshly hatched cicadas were clinging to the tree right in the middle of the Ohio State Fair. As I nudged the lower of the two, he intently watched as it crawled upwards.  As I scanned around the tree more intently, I found another cicada, this one much younger with its electric green blood coursing through its new body.

I'm constantly surprised by how nature is all encompassing- even in the middle of a city like Columbus.  Today it was Weston that reminded me that if we keep eyes and ears open to the world around us, we just never know what miracles of nature we might stumble into.

Tom

Weston Chillin' in the Dairy Barn

Yep, he did great today during our little adventure to the State Fair. Always one of our favorite places to go, we are definitely glad that Weston enjoyed the fair as well. Sheep and cows are in, horses and pigs arriving soon (some today!). And don't forget to check out the ODNR Natural Resources Park, perhaps the nicest most park like section of the fair. If you haven't made it yet this year, you've got one more week, the fair runs through next Sunday.

Oh yeah, if you're at the fair on Tuesday, come by the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves booth right next to the prairie. I'll be there from 2-7, handing out really cool turtle coloring pages, turtle erasers, color changing pencils, prairie wildflower seed packets, and we'll even have a purple cone-flower planting activity for the little ones (although my mom found this quite fun today too!) If you won't be there Tuesday, still stop by the booth and let the DNAP staff know how much you appreciate their nature preserving efforts across Ohio.



Tom

Welcome to the Ohio State Fair

There's nothing really quite like the Ohio State Fair. In fact, it encompasses so many things, so many different types of people, and so many interests, it just about defies description. Yes, you have agricultural and livestock competitions and fair rides (which we really like and there will be plenty of that featured here), but there really is so much more, especially if you take the time to see out those curiosities. Megan and I did just that on Sunday evening. In the interest of brevity, I'm going to do something that I haven't done in a long time- I'll be uploading the images and presenting them as a slideshow.



AND...Megan and I will be FINALLY heading to Maine this Wednesday morning courtesy of U.S. Airways. We can't wait to get there, and you can be sure I'll have plenty to blog about from the pine tree state.