Life Cycle of the Botfly

It was a thing that made me queasy

puffed up fat larva of something

found near a dead chipmunk

I let it go and watched it undulate

over the sidewalk on a hot day

hoping the sun would kill it

didn’t know it would bury itself in soil

to become a botfly that lay small larvae

picked up by unsuspecting mammals

then worm through the fur to an opening

and now inside it bores its way to the skin

feeds off the host in a disturbing life cycle

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dVerse nature poem today. I am still disturbed by seeing the botfly larva. I have tried to be open minded about its ways but have trouble with the “bores its way to the skin” part.

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Mosquito

I am in Ghana, searching for a mosquito which I have prepared to encounter. The yellow fever vaccine has prepared me against this fever which can be fatal. I take my malaria tabs everyday and still I have not seen a mosquito.

On my way up Prayer Mountain, I wear my insect repellent scarf and no mosquito comes to me. All my precautions come forth in the shower of my host family whose son has malaria. I swat that mosquito dead.

out in the jungle

tropical vegetation

yet no mosquito

More Than

Less than a week of being off the water of the mighty Colorado River, my body is still rocking. Some call it disembarkment syndrome when your mind is sensing movement that is no longer there.

My mind returns to the shore of the Grand Canyon, Poncho’s Kitchen, thick sand, rock ledges where the silent scorpion was ready to pounce on a moth that night. How it glowed white under Danny’s UV light and we watched it move in its own darkness.

what we cannot see
hidden in summer shadow
more than time and space

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dVerse prompt on sounds of summer – most scorpions make no sound – saw my first one while camping on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon