5/10/2023 0 Comments Bright bugz smile more editionWho doesn’t welcome light into a darksome world? Beacon Bugs, that’s who. Hail holy Light,” sang the poet John Milton. The strangest case I’ve studied, of the latter, is that of a firefly species whose generations alternate periodically between being visible and invisible-with disastrous results for humans. ![]() To grasp our nature, we need to see the beasts that we don’t see-ourselves and others. I might even say that we humans are the most invisible beasts, because we do not see ourselves as beasts, even though every aspect of our lives is an aspect of our being animals. In a word, I see the parallels between invisible animal life, and human life. It’s the way you see.” A tusky yellow smile accompanied these words, which have since inspired my writing about the invisible beasts that I study: creatures seen only by other invisible creatures (and by me, happily for science.) I write to share, as Granduncle put it, the way I see. I observed Granduncle’s nostril hairs in the defile above his moustache, flying on his breath like pinfeathers. I must have sounded quite upset, because-like a monstrous barrier reef looming-the grand-avuncular moustache approached my face and stopped, smelling of ashes and leather. They didn’t try, they didn’t care, they laughed at me. I said that Leeuwenhoek had had his microscope, but I couldn’t make the other kids see what I saw. ![]() From a height beclouded with cigar smoke, Granduncle rumbled, not unsympathetically, “And what if Leeuwenhoek had wanted to see only what other people saw?” As a small child, I complained to my granduncle Erasmus-my predecessor, the elder spotter of invisible beasts-that since no one liked to go with me to catch invisible beetles, I wanted to see only what the other kids saw. Every few generations, someone is born in our family who sees invisible animals in the mid-20th century, that was myself. ![]() I come from a long line of naturalists and scientists.
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