The Last Word On Nothing

Here’s a thing that reliably brings me delight: seeing a bug on a window.

I don’t know how this love started. But it’s real.

Here’s what happened when I was walking to the water cooler at work the other day. I saw a dark spot on the glass. A step or two more and wings came into focus. I speed-walked back to my desk, put down the glass, picked up my camera, and set the dial to manual focus while I rushed back to the window.

I think it’s a moth. It looks like a moth, and generally moths hold their wings flat, while butterflies rest with wings folded shut. But maybe not, because the way the pros distinguish between moths and butterflies is the shape of the antennae; butterfly antennae are club-shaped and these look a bit clubby to me, when I zoom in. Fun fact: a butterfly is basically a special kind of moth that is active during the day. (So says the Lepidopterists’ Society.) From another angle, I could see a red speck on the back of its abdomen, like it was giving a piggyback ride to a parasite or a clump of eggs.

Two days later, I was sitting at my desk at home. I turned around to look at the rain. And in the rain was this tough little beetle.

Walking down my window, pelted by raindrops.

In journalism, we say it takes three things to make a trend. Find three examples and you can write a story about it.

Sunday morning at brunch I rushed for my camera again.

You might reasonably think it’s a wasp, because it’s got wings and it’s on a window three stories above the ground, but it’s an ant. You can tell by the elbow-shaped antennae—that bend is an ant thing.

Why do I like seeing bugs on my window so much?

• Maybe it’s a collector’s greed.
• Maybe it’s the photographic challenge–if you let the camera make its own choices, it will focus on the cars outside, the clouds, the fence, anything but the bug.
• The bugs got up here on their wings, but they rarely fly away when I come close. I get to watch as they rest between buggy flights.

On Sunday a neighbor told me about a moth she’d seen on her window the night before. It was being beaten by a fierce storm, but she and her new husband could see the moth depositing eggs on the glass. Oh well, they said, those will be gone by morning. It dumped down rain all night.

The next day, the eggs were still there.

I think it’s a story about resilience, she said.

You like it because you know they can’t fly in your face, said another friend.

Yeah, that’s probably part of it.

These are bugs I’d never see otherwise. And here they are, coming to me, and sitting still where I can get a good, long look at them.

Photos: Helen Fields, laboriously.