Felt the wish upon her tongue to fly

[sovay]

This afternoon for the first time in decades, I was stung by a bee. Unlike its summer's coreligionist, it caught in my hair without a telltale buzz, so that I put up my hand to comb out a trapped leaf or twig and received instead a stinger in the pad of my thumb. I was able to pluck it out within surprised seconds since it stood out as clearly as a splinter, but I felt terrible about the bee. The pain had started to ebb by the time I got back to the house, but I took the second half of my walk with my thumb in a baking soda plaster. I was reassured by the sight of other bees in bushes of lavender and sunflowers.

In better news of the insect kingdom, the last two monarchs hatched in the late afternoon and were released by my niece, eagerly fluttering their stained glass wings to the sun.

Comments

[regshoe]

What a lovely monarch <3 The moths I catch sometimes perch on my hands in the process of letting them go, and I always feel very fond of them.

[sovay]

The moths I catch sometimes perch on my hands in the process of letting them go, and I always feel very fond of them.

I'm so glad they do that! Are they a particular kind of moth?

[regshoe]

It's usually the large yellow underwings (Noctua pronuba) and lesser yellow underwings (N. comes) that do this—they're both fairly big and bulky moths, so I think they tend to be more reluctant to fly quickly than the smaller, lighter species, and prefer to crawl around a bit first. :)