Late March

Whenever I have to drive to the post office in Richards, I am always on the alert, for I will surely see some new signs of spring. Last month the dogwood trees were showing their four-petaled flowers that unfold at the first breath of spring. In a couple of pastures, I usually see some egrets on the backs of the cattle. Once I saw an entire field of egrets, ten times more than the number of cows. I am sure to see new wild flowers brightening up the roadsides. Most of them will appear in my yard in a week or so, which I interpret as one sign that my world here in the valley of Caney Creek is a little cooler than the surrounding environs.

Even thought the sun has already set, I head for the pond, principally to put out food for the coyote I saw in the meadow. I only put it out a couple of times a week, but the dog food keeps disappearing. However, I am only assuming coyotes are eating it. The only scat I’ve seen in the area looks like deer. If the deer are eating it I like to have them coming on this property where they may have a safe haven from the hunters in the fall. One of these days I’m going to take time to watch the food pan to discover who is eating the pellets. However, that task won’t go on the schedule until the hot Texas sun scorches my attempts at gardening.

Various new fauna of a smaller variety are showing up. Since I have my computer by the glass door, I get a continual parade of tiny insects staring in at me. There are the green grasshoppers, an occasional preying mantis and one brown armored creature, which is a new specimen for me. As the weather continues to warm, I get new visitors. For several nights in February there were swarms of Mayflies celebrating their one day of life. A couple of weeks later, tons of tumbling bumbling June bugs showed up—in March.

After dark the light attracts the most varied visitors. I am always amazed at the host of moths and little butterflies that gather here each evening. The moths stick onto the window seemingly just to peer in at me. Butterflies are beautiful, but some moths with their velveteen bodies and feathery antennae are equally lovely. There are little green ones, white ones, silver ones, as well as the common brown varieties. Yet some of the brown ones have incredible patterns on their wings. One variety has decorated the underside of its wings to look like bark in such an intricate manner that I chuckle every time one swoops in to join my audience. Such wonderful artists, who could hope to imitate them?

One evening, a Polyphemus moth appears at the glass door. With iridescent spots on its lovely rusty brown wings, which must span six inches, and a fuzzy velveteen body, it is a marvelous insect. I have not seen one since I was twelve years old at Pop's country place. One doesn’t forget a Polyphemus moth. I am so excited to see it that I go outside to admire it from the topside. Needless to say, it does not appreciate being disturbed by the movement of the glass door, so it flops about as if very disoriented. Finally, it settles on the wall under the light, so that I can take in its dusky beauty.

Another evening I pause to admire a white moth with black spots, most of which are tiny rings, rather like a leopard. If evolution is only directed by selection, how could such a creature survive? To protect itself while sitting on something white with back ringlets? While it’s true that some moths have a barklike camouflage, I find the best renditions on their undersides that are never seen—except when they have landed on a glass door. However, the one who created this back and white costume could not have had any interest whatsoever in protection.

When a Luna moth shows up one evening, its beauty sends me into a fit of ecstasy. Its color is so luscious that he could surely find protection in a bowl of lime sherbet. The delicate maroon line that encircles his huge wings as well as the tiny iridescent eyespots fascinate me. Immediately, I open the door cautiously to go out on the deck to get a better look. To my surprise, she flutters inside and takes a seat on the refrigerator door, so that I can admire her in all her glory. She peacefully meditates for a couple of hours until I put her outside when I go to bed. I am so pleased that the two most beautiful moths in North America have shown up right here at my little abode. Now that’s a miracle. To try to imagine the source of such creations sends my brain tumbling.

Certainly the variety in the butterfly and moth world seem to contradict the premise of self-preservation by imitating nature—some tiny ones have a silver body and wings, yet there’s no shiny silver visible in nature. Others are decorated in such an endless variety that they seem to demonstrate a caprice of the creator, rather than a straight line of evolution.

Are we to assume that it is only moths, butterflies and the 1,001 tiny buzzing things that abound here who have a unique flare in the creation? Is it possible that we humans have not evolved for intelligent reasons? Dismissing the lengthy records of history that might back up such a supposition, we can look at an individual human life. I think we would find there is a giant chasm between what each person thinks he is, what he wants to he and what he lives out in is daily life. Is that the creator’s caprice too?