Sara K.

Fantastic work! I was absolutely delighted in the demo!!!

And then you have to fix it, and as long as you’re doing that you should do the next one before it breaks…

4 days later you wake up in a haze of old ethanol and plastic chips. You’re surrounded by new full vials. You’re finished!!

But wait, look on your elbow, where did that label come from?!?

I’m posting this now because I’ll be devastated if Bluesky deletes it accidentally, but we aren’t done.

Ps. Here’s the link to that prior source

thinkinthemorning.com/de-mortuis-n...

“…blue (Euphilotes enoptes smithi). As we were maneuvering through a field, the tall grasses suddenly parted and out walked our local "naturalist" Sir Jacques toting a shotgun and sporting a dour scowl. He claimed we were trespassing. He said he would not hesitate to use the gun if we didn't leave immediately. Bob explained about the blue butterflies but this only enraged Helfer further. It turns out he was of the opinion that he had discovered that species and never received credit for it. He was not about to share his prize with some citified intellectual. Needless to say…”

This leads me to a different record with stories that make me stop feeling as inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Are you starting to feel like you’re trapped in #TheRoottreesAreDead ? I sure am.)
This excerpt is from a blog called Thinkinthemorning from 2017.

“Knowing Don's taste for limericks, I did one for Jacques as well: Tea-totaling Helfer was brash, When converting his chips into cash, Twas ironic, I think, That he veered toward the drink, Ending Jacques on the rocks with a splash. Not that Don would approve of these. Or that his family would either. The local paper didn't. They never published them. These poems needed to be written. And they never would have, if not for Don.”

(For the record, he was a legitimate naturalist.)
I’ve included the limerick because it adds some more details.
(Find the letter in the archives of “theava” number 30261)

theava.com/archives/30261

An excerpt from the Anderson Valley Advertiser BY AVA NEWS SERVICE ON APRIL 2, 2014 “One of its fiercest opponents was Jacques Helfer. A faux naturalist who opposed everything Don stood for. In a weekly column of the Mendocino Beacon titled "Jack's Corner". Needless to say, Jacques and I went at it hammer and tongue for many years of matters of historical significance. I went for fact. He went for drama. So when Mr. Helfer died, I eulogized him in a poem that Don might appreciate. Jack's body lies over the ocean. Jack's body lies over the sea, But he no longer lies in the Beacon, And that's all that matters to me.”

Dig a tiny bit deeper and holy crap does his local drama go hard.
In a Letter about the first chairman of the Mendocino Historical Review Board, Donald P. Hahn, I came across a scathing review and poem about the death.
Oh, did I forget to mention that he was found at the bottom of a cliff?

A illustration of a praying mantis eating a grasshopper with the words “the same event that spells The End for one is breakfast for another”

While endeavoring to discover if Jacques Richard Helfer actually drew these comics (he did) I found quite the… uh…. engaging history. He was enough of a ‘community member’ to have historical records made about him, including his mysterious death.

kelleyhousemuseum.catalogaccess.com/people/1868

A drop caps M with a tarsal claw style spiny design and a grasshopper face in the middle.

Part of the actual key, including a lovely mole cricket.

These particular illustrations are from the much later “How To Know The Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, and their Allies” by Jacques R. Helfer (a different Jacques, don’t get confused) and might be my favorites.

A drop cap of an “A” illustrated with a tiny person trying to catch a grasshopper on a shrub with their net.

A drop cap “L” in an illustrated manuscript style knotwork letter. Beside the letter is a pane of a bearded gentleman (adorned in giant hat, sword, sash) in front of a castle on a hill. He holds a net almost as tall as himself. There’s a grasshopper flying overhead, a tiny katydid in the plant by his leg, and a further tiny decorative border of two more katydids facing each other at the top.

An E drop cap is decorated with a lovely illustration of an earwig!

If you come across any of the “How To Know The…” series, check inside for periodic illustrated comical drop caps, a frontispiece cartoon, and opening peppered with playful comics. Look closely at the L. There’s four orthopterans hiding there!!

An illustration of two grasshopper people reading little books. They’re sitting on each side of a group of books as large as they are as if they are bookstops.

A book illustration of a grasshopper with the wings on one side extended. It is an extremely detailed illustration and the hind wing has a glorious but subtle checkered pattern.

One of the richest veins of charming nature illustrations comes a series of books called the Pictured Key Nature Series. The series was started by Harry Edwin Jaques in the 1920s and eventually expanded to 20+ books. They were self published so #H.E.Jacques slipped cute details in everywhere.

A curse on all snap cap jars and vials too.

I have no idea why I just thought of this but the scent of crayfish in ethanol still haunts me to this day after we had to study them in field zoology.

Awesome! Well, if you went to the museum of biological diversity during your visit, he’s the spider guy there!

Oh, but also just in case so it’s not a bummer later: it might be literally impossible if they’re not sexually mature. Spiders are very rude that way.

Mostly the big thing is that we never pin, point mount, or dry them. They generally disarticulate in the worst way. Legs everywhere.

Email Dr. Richard Bradley at OSU. He’s a lovely emeritus professor, curates the spider collection at the museum here, and will be very happy to point you in the right direction. spidersinohio.net

@americanbeetles.bsky.social is a museum person who can add details.

What I can say is that we usually use 80% ethanol at the museum here. Nowadays we prioritize safety so some of the recipes you might find for flexible preservation from earlier eras have been *very* intentionally retired.

Platyrhopalopsis melleii - Wikipedia

My favorite line on Wikipedia is the part about how they still have the anal-arsenal of their bombadier beetle relatives but would “never use them against the ants”.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platyrh...

Have the gift of the knowledge that this beetle exists and is sneaking into ant nests somewhere on earth right now.

They speak ant fluently and thus, essentially, talk their way into the nests.

Melleii is also a rock solid character name.

(Before anyone criticizes this as ridiculously privileged behavior, know that I’m 100% aware. But also, there are good data indicating maternal panic/stress causes epigenetic changes. I’m trying not to risk it. Life will be hard enough without kiddos brain telling them to be scared all the time.)

My favorite thing about green June beetles is that, once they’re getting ready to pupate, the larvae are too chonk to use their teeny leggies so they move across surfaces (like sidewalks) on their backs instead! It’s wild to watch, and I always get a couple texts asking about it each year.

A book page with two grasshoppers drawing on it” Naturally the best place to pry into the affairs of the grasshopper is the meadow where he lives; and the pleasantest way for both ourselves and him is to settle down under a shady bush on the edge of a tangle of goldenrods and asters, where the grasshoppers are blissfully chirping. It is only necessary to keep still and wait a little, when we shall surely be rewarded by the appearance full before our watchful eyes of one or more of the funny folk. Then, if in the course of waiting for one to come, or even while watching it after it has come, the warm sunshine and fragrant odors lull us to sleep, that too is beautiful; for such sleep is the most refreshing sleep in the world, and presently we wake up and go on watching with a delicious sense of renewal, such as…”

“…is bestowed only by the magic touch of sun and open air. Resting thus at ease, we shall see much that has never been written in books, for how much we think we know. Our grasshopper is alive; and in this lovely world what two living creatures are exactly alike in appearance or manners? Surely not two grasshoppers!” The page is titled The Idler and the Grasshopper.

as a pregnant person, I am making a choice to prioritize my baby by not being perpetually anxious.

Thus, I am here to share the wisdom of the ancients and the comfort they found in remembering that grasshoppers are alive and that no two living creatures are exactly alike.

A page detailing the contents of a book. Chapter titles are “17. Dreams of Grandeur 18. An impertinent fellow 19. The guests of the ants 20. War 21. A terrible accusation 22. I escape, and decide that I have had adventures enough.” Below that is the elaborate illustration of a roach gentleman with a bowler hat.

A title page of a book called “ Episodes of Insect Life by Acheta domestica, M.E.S.” With a picture of 2 Orthoptera and 2 Lepidoptera having a May dance. The book is from 1849.

A page of a book with an illustration of a cricket riding a mayfly. The text says: THE POINTS OF OUR HOBBY " No joyless forms shall regulate Our living calendar." —WORDSWORTH. What have we here? A May Fly in January! A magnified May Fly! Verily, Master Cricket, thou dost not only magnify, but most unseasonably misplace the objects of Creation,— strangely, too, dost thou misapply them,—for in seating thy domestic self upon the back of this ephemeral high-flier, we are quite at a loss to guess thy meaning.—Then, gentle reader, guess not at all, only have patience, and all seeming incongruities shall be reconciled. Suffice it, now, that as in the Cricket we have introduced thee to our symbolic self, so in the”

Continuing from the prior page it says “few of them are capable of a single service, except to amuse the little hour of life, or hardly this; for are not most of them discarded by their riders, as worn out before them? But it is never thus with the gentle steeds which have borne us through the flowery paths of nature. To the end of time these will carry us; nay, they will do more, for where is the path of nature which leads not from the world we live in, ascending to its Mighty Author and to the worlds unseen, of which in this, and in its minutest objects, we dimly discover innumerable types and shadows? Will not then our mounted May Fly, alias Day Fly, serve to symbolize an innocent and pleasant pursuit, such a one as may help, at all events, to make the year pass as a day, and that a day of May?” The illustration paired with it is a mayfly weighing more heavily on a scale balanced against legal documents, a crown, and a sword with the text below it “to the end of time, this will carry us”

Take to heart this little note from 1849 about the shared joy of the ‘innumerable minutest objects’ that are bugs.
It ends with a mayfly weighing more heavily upon a scale than the grandest symbols of legality, wealth, and power. Below it is the text “To the end of time, this will carry us.”

Image of a magazine from the museum hoard. The cover says NATURE MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 1926 $3 a Year 35 Cents And features an image of a Virginia Opossum hanging from a fruit tree backlit by the moon. The cover is faded to blue and yellow from time to time

In times of uncertainty I try to take comfort in knowing that the cycle of innovation and loss is eternal, and that all we can do as individuals is protect the history until the cycle comes back around.

The inside walls of public bathroom stalls.

Evolution was pretty lazy. It rarely led to entirely new technologies (especially in higher organisms), but rather just jiggers existing things a bit to adapt to new environments.

It is important to try to remember the wonder one felt when one first really understood that.

5/n

A dramatically colored high contrast large isopod on a hand. It’s black and white and yellow with big multi-jointed antennae and cute round eyes.

Porcellio haasi adult males are surprisingly relaxed about being handled!
#porcellio #isopods #captivebred #porcelliohaasi

Darn tough socks 😍

Image of a lace bug, Family Tingidae. It's a weirdly spiky bug with wings that look like lace

Bright and colorful insect drawing, with a katydid, butterflies, and a caterpillar.

Oooh, just discovered Smithsonian Open Access -- unrestricted CC images that are clearly labeled by Family, genus & species! Also cute art www.si.edu/openaccess