Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California
I’ve said before that our garden boasts few insects, but this daily photo exercise is teaching me to look again. Watering the rosemary hedge the other day, I thought I saw one of its closer branches begin to move - not soft undulation caused by the the hose’s pressure, but an independent, high-tail-it-out-of-reach kind of move, as if the branch suddenly had legs. On closer examination, of course, I saw that it did. I grabbed my iPhone from my pocket and shoved it into the bush to get a close-up shot.
A little research tells me that my visitor is an Indian walking stick, a bug that has been present in California for only a few decades, an invasive species that particularly likes to feed on many of the plants present in our garden - roses, azalea, camellias, geraniums (no mention of rosemary on the list). “If the insect is in danger of being harmed,” the description reads, “the female will splay her forelegs to reveal a bright red patch on her inner femora near the attachment point to the body." ...Exactly what happened here when the camera got too close. She also lays millions of eggs unpredictably and indiscriminately, which makes it hard to stop the spread.
Nature is remarkable. I cannot really imagine - in spite of my rudimentary understanding and fervent belief in science - how and why the Indian walking stick ever evolved or, for that, matter, how it managed to move into my garden. But here she is, this female, red-legged warrior, hidden in plain sight. Can she serve as analogy for the virus that lurks among us? I wish not. A friend shared an article today from the ever-sober Atlantic Magazine (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/2020/06/virus-will-win/612946/? ) reminding us that this new dangerous “bug” not only exists in our midst, but that as more and more people discount the science behind its spread, the “virus will win.” Yikes. We seem to need such reminders every single day: though we cannot see the power it holds over us, though we are anxious to resume the life we lived, this disease is going to be around for much longer than we hoped, the danger hiding in plain sight.