The nights have been dropping into the thirties, and it’s the time of year when many creatures sharing my yard are getting ready to say goodbye, either until next spring or forever. For many insects, the one season they have in the world is coming to an end. I thought of all this because I discovered a stick bug on the outside of my bedroom window when I pushed open the curtains this morning.
It had found the glass last night warmer than the air outside, I’m sure. I tried to get a picture standing at its eye-level in my bedroom, but my phone camera couldn’t focus on it. The bug’s camouflage had fooled the phone.
I went outside for another attempt. As I folded myself down to his level and stared through my Iphone trying to make it focus, I wondered what he saw. I wondered which of the little dots on his twig head were his eyes and what he thought of the pink rectangle I kept holding up between my face and his.
Then I looked at him without the phone between us, trying to make eye contact, wanting to tell him goodbye and that I hope his season in the world has been a good one. Anyway, I’m sure he saw my eyes searching for his eyes and knew what I meant by that.
He stayed completely still on the glass. Does he have sticky stuff on his feet? Wikipedia says that “stick bugs are leaf skeletonisers,” — what a great word!— that they “[eat] the tissues between the leaf veins, pausing for a while and then walking on to new leaves.” And evidently they feed mostly between nine at night and three in the morning. So perhaps this guy was resting with a full belly? (I think it was a “he” based on what else I read on Wikipedia, but at the time, pronoun choice was a mystery).
According to a cool website called animaldiversity.org, when females in trees lay their eggs, “The eggs dropping from the trees sound like droplets of rain.” I also learned that the eggs fall “usually from great heights, down to the leaf litter where they are left to overwinter. When the nymphs hatch, they fend for themselves.”
Okay, so they aren’t great parents. But think of what it took for this individual to survive the free fall as an egg, hatch out of the chaos and danger of the world at ground level, make it through however many feedings and moltings to reach adulthood, and manage to find the warmth of my bedroom window glass on a chilly October night! I felt a huge surge of admiration for this skinny critter who had interrupted my “to do” list this morning. So I posted this, in his honor.