Do Beetles Have Heart Attacks?

While standing outside my back door, a rather small brownish beetle clinging to the stucco of my house caught my eye.   I had no sooner focused on the beetle when it fell from the stucco and crashed down onto the brick ledge about two feet below.   After falling, the beetle did not move.  I watched the beetle for quite a while.  No movement at all.  Eventually, I gently prodded at the beetle with a blade of grass.

The beetle was dead.  I had, apparently, witnessed the beetle’s death and spectacular fall.

Had the beetle suffered a heart attack?

Wait.

Do insects have heart attacks?   Is that something important to know?

I withdrew to the house and scoured the internet.

Insects don’t have a complex system of veins and arteries splayed throughout their bodies like the roots of a great oak tree, as we do.  Instead, they have an open system where hemolymph flows freely throughout their body cavities, lubricating tissues and transporting nutrients and wastes.   The heart of a beetle is something of a dorsal vessel that pulsates to circulate the hemolymph throughout the body cavity.

Heart attacks seem unlikely.

What, then, caused this sudden death and dramatic fall?

Annie Dillard, within her brilliant work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, wrote this: “A photography professor at the University of Florida just happened to see a bird die in midflight; it jerked, died, dropped, and smashed on the ground.”

A few years ago, a dead starling hung upside-down  from a powerline I passed almost daily on my drive into town.  The bird had died while perched on the line.  Upon death, the bird’s claws froze around the line and it swung down below the wire like macabre pendulum.  The bird hung on the line this way for several weeks.

I don’t know why some birds and beetles die, but they are as good at is as anything else.

—Mitchell Hegman

At the End of the Rainbow

A brief but powerful storm delivered heavy rains intermixed with soft hail late last evening.  As always, I stepped outside and stood on my front entry stoop to “feel” the intensity of the storm.  A sudden chill tickling at my arms.  The near-roar of rain and hail assaulting my roof.  The scent of wet earth and sagebrush circulating in at me from the open prairie.

Rivulets and puddles quickly formed all around me.

I witnessed as a single, electric yellow goldfinch flew in from somewhere out in the storm-darkening landscape and entered the leafy protective canopy of my Mayday tree.

The rain stopped rather suddenly.  In the west, clouds parted from around the sun, like stage curtains quickly drawn aside.  And then, a lovely trick of light.  A rainbow projected across the sky east of my house.

At the end of the rainbow I found my solar PV array.

—Mitchell Hegman

Pictures of Food

I bump into more than a few pictures of food posted on Facebook.  With the exception of the occasional photographs taken when a few of us gather to process huckleberries into jam, I have not participated in this practice.  Today, I am, as the saying goes, throwing my hat in the ring.

Following are several photographs of the more “creative” dishes served to me and my travel companions during a visit to Vietnam in the spring of 2009.

—Mitchell Hegman

White Marsh Marigold

Fortunately, my buddy Bill got stuck in a massive snowdrift while we were riding ATVs the other day.  Actually, the good fortune was found in the fact we were rather boxed in by something of a swamp when we encountered the drift.

Allow me to explain.

While my three riding companions assessed the best possible way to dig Bill’s machine from the snowdrift, I wandered out to inspect a flourish of flowers I spotted on the fringes of the marsh just of the road.

Lucky me!  A new find.  I didn’t recall seeing these wildflowers in any of my previous travels.

I captured a couple images of the flowers and then identified them once I returned home.

The flowers were a white marsh marigold (sometimes referred to as elkslip).  This particular flower often emerges in the melting snow and likes to have its feet wet during early growth and flowering—exactly as I found them.

The flowers, about the same diameter as golf ball, are simple in design, but lovely nonetheless.

I have posted two images I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources: Wildflowers of Montana, http://montana.plant-life.org

Above Helena

The Rocky Mountains nearly tumble overtop the city of Helena, Montana.  This chain of mountains, the Rockies, stretches some 3000 miles from Northern Alberta and British Columbia all the way to New Mexico.  A couple days ago, we rode four-wheelers into the Rockies just south of the city of Helena.

The roads we climbed were primitive and often incredibly rock-strewn.  At high elevations, we encountered several bands of deep snow.  While this section of the mountain range offers few of the craggy peaks the Rockies are noted for, we encountered plenty of stunning views and running waters.

Climbing into the Mountains

Chessman Reservoir

Brother Mark

Brother Bill (Stuck in a Drift))

Running Water

North

—Mitchell Hegman

Front and Back

We experienced another stunning sunset at the end of yesterday.  We need these sunsets from time to time.  We need, sometimes, to retire into a wash of beautiful colors.

Posted today are photographs I captured from the front and back of my house.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Nighthawk

I suppose it’s a small blip in the bigger cacophony of what swirls around me today.  Need I remind anyone about Covid-19 or the protests turning violent and criminal in cities across America?

But there is something disturbing about spotting the first returned nighthawk of the season smashed flat on the gravel road leading to my house.

The nighthawks often land on the open gravel near the center of country roads to rest during the half-dark or fully dark hours.  Automobiles sometimes race overtop the birds before they are able lift.

Nighthawks are the last of the migrating birds to reach my prairie as spring turns to summer.  They have the longest migration routes of any North American bird. They winter in South America and travel over land through Mexico and Central America to reach me.

Their numbers have been on decline for years.

I stopped and removed the dead bird from the roadway.

—Mitchell Hegman