Saturday 18 July 2009

The Natural History of Showeroom


Where do moths go when it tips down, as it did yesterday? They burrow deep under leaves and stuff, which works. I remember doing the same as an Army cadet and later on an expedition in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and being surprised how dry you can stay. This Buff Arches, however, preferred our shower room.
Maybe it's a Ukrainian nationalist, or just likes our choice of tile colours. Or did it sleepily attach itself to my pyjamas when I was emptying the trap? My Gilbert White-style studies of the shower room's natural history also revealed this snail. They are great climbers round here; we sometimes watch them sliding up our bedroom windows en route to...where? The roof? I must look at the TV aerial through field glasses some time to see if they consider it their equivalent of K2. Most houses have a spot of moth life. We met my nieces for Penny's birthday tea and one of them reported a chrysalis on her curtains (probably a Peacock's). Her younger sister, who has just been clearing out her student hovel, found three cocoons in a folded-up tablecloth. I didn't know that students had tablecloths. All is not lost.

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