Cryptonaturalist Tree Bug excerpts

This podcast is everything rn.

Life is so scary in a country being ransacked by billionaires in a fascist oligarchical coup.

Deep breath.

In this moment, I am okay.

But how much are we willing to continue to tolerate?

sigh.

Anyway. There were some stunningly beautiful moments in This episode of the Cryptonaturalist, "Tree Bug."

Ghost insects. Walking sticks. Stick bugs. These are the phasmids. Insects that look
like bits of twig or leaf. They are gentle herbivores, but some folks still find them
unsettling.
In many ways, their camouflage in more effective than pure invisibility.
Afterall, if you bump into an invisible object, you’ll seek for an explanation to
what you’ve just felt. You don’t notice anything if you encounter a phasmid. The
explanation for their presence is baked into the disguise itself. They disappear
into the commonplace. They vanish into the mundane. Unless you live in
Antarctica, I can all but guarantee that you’ve stared directly at one of these
gentle creatures without ever registering its presence.
I’d say humans could learn a thing or two from these creatures. I’ve met more
than a few people who seem to think raw power and perceived danger are the
best paths to safety. Well, I’ve seen many a menacing and venomous spider
plucked up by a sparrow. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a phasmid snatched up by
a predator.

Maybe there’s something to be said for gentleness and finding
harmony with your landscape, hmm?

...

I watched a pair of blue birds sit in Cat’s branches. Sky on their backs, the earth on
their chests. Two little patches of forever springtime. Watching them led my eye
to the tattered remnants of an old robin’s nest. Just think of that. A bird nesting
on an insect. A small and precious oddity reminding us of the larger precious
oddity that nature is forever full of surprises, forever beyond the grasp of a
wholistic understanding because its more than a collection of things to know, it’s
a living, breathing work of art that changes every moment of every day.

When you go out in nature, you aren’t a witness to a place, you’re a participant in an event. See, the universe isn’t a place, it’s an event. You can’t sit on the sidelines because there are no sidelines.
You are the nature that you love and even your love itself is as much a part of nature as any tall pine on a remote mountain peak.

And the field report! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!


Field Report:
This is Jesse Thorn transmitting on CryptoNaturalist frequency 11-58-1.

Vampire bats.

You can try to tell me that they’re fascinating. That bats are the only mammals
that fly and, even more exceptional, vampire bats are the only mammals to
subsist solely on blood. Nature is amazing and full of wonder and blah, blah, blah,
blah…

You can try to tell me that vampire bats are not a threat to humans and they only
weigh about two ounces.

Well, bad news, friend. I’m not buying it.

Rain is wet. The sun is hot. And a Dracula is a Dracula.

Look, I’m a well-documented lover of animals and a champion admirerer of
adorable pet photos, but I need to draw the line somewhere.

You can ask me to praise the Peruvian werewolf penguin and you’ll get no
argument from me.

You can tell me to stroke the flowing bandages of Arkansas’s famous mummy
toads and I won’t hesitate.

Heck, my best friend when I was a kid had a pet Frankenstein, but Draculas are
just different.

I can understand that you might be skeptical.

I can hear you saying, “It’s just a tiny bat. What’s the big deal?”

Well, let’s rattle off a few facts.

· Vampire bats are active during the darkest part of the night.
· They fly about a meter off the ground.
· Bats aren’t blind, but they have an aggressive propaganda effort to
convince you otherwise.
· Vampire bats have both echolocation and the ability to sense heat.
Sorta like the monster from The Predator movies, but also with
echolocation.
· They’re eyes are droplets of elemental darkness summoned from a
time before light.
· They are undead abominations that befoul the air with damp, leathery
wings and sow nightmares wherever they fly.

Maybe some of you are saying, “but, Jesse, that’s just nature.”

Yeah? Well that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Jesse Thorn, signing off.

(Credits included for the bat prose:
Jesse Thorn is the host and producer of Bullseye and Jordan, Jesse, Go!, and the co-host and producer of Judge John Hodgman. He's also the founder and proprietor of the Maximum Fun podcast network. I must say, that if it wasn’t for the Maximum Fun network, I’m not sure that I ever would have taken an interest in podcasts or started this show. So, thank you, Jesse.)

...

This is my favorite thing about this podcast: the way it takes regular everyday nature and makes it completely mindblowingly magical. I looooooove the magical qualities of bats, so to have them communicated as if they were the most terrifyingly magical gothy spooky monsters imaginable just fills me with a wicked delicious delight than I can't put into words.

There are several other wonderful gems in this episode, pretty much the entire thing is a gem, but I'll end with the postscript:

Postscript:
Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if you’ve spotted a tree bug. Try this trick. Press
your ear to the trunk and listen for the purr of fly wings. If you’re still not sure,
keep your ear pressed to the tree for a day or so. If the tree moves away from
your ear, it’s a tree bug.

-Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist (color emphasis mine)