Frustrated at my attempts to get close to Nature, I decided to study larger and less perishable fauna - and turned my attention to vertebrates. There was a nice black lizard with a blue throat living on a stump in my garden. With the scientist at my elbow I had watched it eat, mate, fight and contemplate the universe. So, with my scientist away on a trip, I now sat for hours, well hidden, I thought, watching the stump and feeling scientific. The lizard came out once, looked at me in a hostile manner, retired and never appeared again. I caught and killed flies and laid them on his stump for him. Nothing happened.
Next I turned to the birds; and bought a pair of field glasses. The price of Nature study had now risen to more than sixty dollars. Lying on my back in the grass, I would locate a flow of song and fix my binoculars upon it. No bird. I would fix on another spot. Much song, but no bird.
I finally discovered that when you try to look at a bird he or she simply moves around to the other side of the branch, parallel to it and so that not a feather shows. If you go around to that side, the bird moves around to the first side, keeping step with you. If you go under the branch, it moves on top. After a half hour of this, when the bird has given you a good case of the blind staggers, it simply flies away.
Then I turned to insects, and tried the butterfly net, leaping and prancing hither and yon across the flowering meads. It was a pretty sport if you did not mind wet feet and burs in your nylons, but the butterflies, showing extraordinary intelligence, did not fly into the net but out of it. If I swooped under them they flew up; if I swooped over them they flew down and the net collapsed; if I waved it in a figure eight through the air, the butterflies made a figure eight in the opposite direction.
I tried grasshoppers, trying to sneak up on them. They would arrange themselves parallel to a grass stem, only their elbows showing, lean their heads over, peer at me solemnly with their long, horse faces and remain motionless. If, enraged, I made a lunge at them, they leaped out and up like firecrackers and simply dematerialized into thin air.
About this Author
David is the author of many articles including Best Friend Quotes and also the author of Best life quotes
Other articles:
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