Chapter 245

6/13/2010

environmental engineering

 robber barons?

A funny thing happened on the way out the door to the Glens Falls Art Festival  . This "bug" landed on our glass storm door to escape the rain. I thought it was an immature juvenile damselfly, learning how to fly but have been advised its likely a Robber Fly, a predator that might eat a damselfly. We've had many juveniles around like our Robin 

  that were unfortunately eaten by hawk this week. But that's just part of the cycle of life and the balance of nature. NOT like the sickening insult occurring to the Gulf of Mexico. That is a slap in the face from both the environmental and the engineering perspective.

In my college Entomology class Dr Kraal (really) taught us about the importance and beauty of the insect world. Taxonomists have identified millions more species in the Insecta class than in any of the others of the animal kingdom. Indignantly he declared, they are NOT bugs and DON'T hit an insect when it's down.

Insects are characterized by having 6 legs. Individual species are identified by examining their mouth parts  which are used on prey ) and fluted trachea or spiracles on side of body for breathing, feathery feet, compound eye, morphologic characteristics, type of antennae segmentation, leg parts, heavy cilia, etc. The profile view shows 

 better the pronounced humped thorax. My hockey teammate Paul Novak had given significant input to the NYS damselfly survey  and helped guide the identification.

We purchased this beautiful 4" hand carved pelican   from Bob and Deb's Vermont Sugarhouse in memorial to the injured species very much unlike these  images from the Gulf (Boston Globe pics). Woods of maple, satinwood, holly, padouck and canarywood. My pelican image produced via little trick learned from another show artist.