Simply stated, I caught three Western pond
turtles this week after five days of work and last month, I captured nine
turtles in three days. I reflected on this as Kate and I were preparing to pull
the traps out of the water I was not sanguine about the results from today.
Alas, as one my favorite bards John Donne would write, I ardently bemoaned my
sorry state - after all he is a biologist's poet. After all, he did write a sonnet about a flea - only a biologist with a heart could do such a grand job! Of course, Burns did write of a louse.
THE FLEA
by John Doone
MARK but this
flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou
deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks
thee,
And in this flea our two bloods
mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be
said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of
maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one
blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we
would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea
spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than
married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and
marriage temple is.
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| "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. |
Summarily I was chastised after my dramatic statement by Kate as she began offering repeated reminders of why natural systems will not respond to my focus on my goal and yield
to my prevailing production “mentality”. Further, she said because each of the turtles we did
catch are new to this year’s survey, the results this week something to
rejoice.
It is vexing to have a brilliant and able colleague to remind me of
the obvious facts I overlooked. Chagrined over my behavior and my line of
thinking, the image of Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” came to mind. Then
I set about sliding down the steep bank and into the water to retrieve the hoop
traps and the activity traps I set out yesterday.
Alas, there was something to celebrate even though I or really “we” caught no turtles today. We caught “Giant Green Predacious Water Beetles” (Dytiscus
marginicollis) in the activity traps. These large, dark green, elegant beetles are exciting
to watch and finding them was unexpected. However, because they do need to breathe air regularly all four we caught had expired. It would be much nicer to net them and then photograph and video them, and later release them.
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| “Giant Green Predacious Water Beetles” (Dytiscus marginicollis) |
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|
However, I will honor my two
specimens by examining them in detail and photographing them. Yes, honor them! Some organisms are particularly amazing and elegant AND even a biologist like me, who is accustomed to collecting specimens, can be struck by the miracle of a living creature - and wax sentimental.
Oh, by the way, I am stuck in
this mode of speaking, thinking, and writing because of my addiction to the BBC, English, Scottish, Welch, and Irish literature, and films.
During my next academic
life my goal is to visit the United Kingdom, spend days if not months walking the streets, all the while thinking the biologists and bards who preceded me (i.e., Charles Darwin and John Donne).
