#Inktober52, #inktober, "Lunar"

Luna Moths are named for the Roman moon goddess.  Wikipedia says they aren't rare, but are seldom seen because the adults are nocturnal and only live for 7-10 days.  They're big and catch your attention though.

I was pleasantly thinking about Luna Moths when my neighbor informed me he had a homeless guy with a vicious dog living in his yard.  Yeeks!  We spent some time with the cops, who didn't shoot anyone.  In fact, everyone was very polite, but then I live in suburbia.  The squatter was told to pack up his huge pile of belongings and get out or get cited for trespassing.  This obviously deterred my impulse to go looking for Luna Moths in the night and disrupted my peaceful thoughts about bugs.

I talked myself down from all this excitement and tried to get back to moths but a shot went off.  I was unwilling to go outside to see if anyone was dead, spending my time calculating the distance and wondering if a bullet could pierce my steel sided house.  It turned out the homeless guy refused to vacate and threatened someone with the giant, vicious dog.  The threatened man fired a warning shot.  That seemed to finally motivate the squatter to move his microwave and other appliances, a cockatoo, and who knows what else he had back there.

I again tried to fix my mind on moths, but thought about a crazy bumblebee I saw instead.  It was walking around in circles, nothing like usual bumblebee behavior.  A visit to Wikipedia informed me it was infected by a parasite which made the bee leave its hive and walk around in circles before dying.  This earns them the name "zombees".  The parasite lays its' eggs in the bee's abdomen and about a week later the pupae emerge from the throats and heads of the dead bees.  Oh yuck.

How is this my life?  I haven't bothered anybody.  I don't deserve zombees and homeless guys with vicious dogs!

At the same time, I'm not entirely surprised something happened in that yard.  A week or so ago, I called the cops on a couple who seemed to be scoping the property and who tore off as soon as they saw me watching them (twice).  I found an empty pack of cigarettes in my yard in an unlikely place.  I was on high alert, and quite aware others thought I was just a hysterical female to pacify and ignore -- but then I wasn't worried about the cops killing me so I should just sit down and shut up, right?  I'm feeling very sympathetic towards the people protesting police practices.

Watching a zombee walk around in circles may not seem important.  I rather doubt those parasites will breed in my abdomen, but just knowing stuff can be useful in unexpected ways.  An observant artist is a better artist as a general rule, and an informed person is more interesting.

My point is to notice things.  Trust your gut.  If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.

I ran out of space to actually write about Luna Moths, but if you're interested you can see Wikipedia's info here.