All along the branches, And down amongst the bines We hear the insects chattering The gossip of the vines: Seems someone grassed the hoppers up, And sprung a Springtime storm – They even cussed the locusts low To watch the rumours swarm. The wetas whet their wilting wit, And rub their wings in glee – This really isn’t kosher, The Jerusalems agree. But somewhere in the undergrowth, Striations getting shushed – It simply isn’t cricket For a cricket to be bushed. Lurking there in plain sight Are the lives the cryptids hid – You won’t believe the racket When you hear what Katy did !
They started coming over here a decade back or so, A few at first, and hardly noticed, where the good winds blow. Of course, the many coats they wear have helped, despite their glitzy show.
At first, we thought how marvellous to find such guests as these – A touch of the exotic in the roses and the peas, And something to replace the sorry absence of the friendly bees.
But now we hear they’re taking jobs from seven-spotted lads, Or that they breed too many kids compared to local dads, And even claims of bullying, from roaming gangs of bolshy cads !
And sheltering through Winter in a corner, in the gloom, We find them huddled with their kind, at twenty to a room – A lack of integration with the natives, is what we assume.
They offer services for thrips, which two-spots can’t compete in – The gardeners are overjoyed, the unions are beaten. And does it really even matter, if the aphids all get eaten ?
The market does its work, with consequences untoward – They gobble up their rivals to monopolise the board – They’re less a friendly immigrant, and more a raging mongrel horde !
Yet maybe we’re reacting to a non-existent wrong – Let’s leave the species to it, and they might just get along, With more than plenty greenfly shared among this multi-cultured throng.
But let’s not read too much comparing ladybird and man, For beetles run on instinct, with no higher thought or plan. They cannot make a compromise – but we are humans, and we can.
Various species of coccolithophores. Each is a single-celled alga surrounded by plates.
Everything from Shells
Downs go up and downs go down, As wave on wave of frozen ocean Built each ridge and vale and crown With ev’ry ancient tide in motion. Tiny creatures swarmed the sea And dropped their tiny plates all over, From Stonehenge to Normandy As deeply as the Cliffs of Dover.
Singular alga sounds all wrong, as if the term has become strictly a mass noun.
Innocent spiders close down schools When ignorant humans panic. Why the hell are we so prepared To see them as Satanic ? We wonder why our schools are broke, And all our nerves are fried – Yet choose which phobias we’ll stoke, And wear our hates with pride – It only takes the merest sight To send us shrieking with delight. Our fears are learned, and screeching Just ain’t what our schools should teach in.
Far, far better we learn to love The harmless ones, at least – Let our babies play with monies, Let our kids embrace the beast. Rearing spinners out of eggs, And never let the wolves repulse – Daddy, bring a daddy-longlegs, Mama, bring a widow-false – Or better yet, we should be shown To watch awhile, then leave alone. And maybe then, here’s hoping, Then the schools can all stay open.
Caterpillars metamorph, from juvenile to butterfly, And maggots turn to ants and wasps and beetles, by and by, And tadpoles can be newts and salamanders, toads and frogs But when it comes to mammals, well, There’s little change of which to tell, For puppies only ever get to grow up into dogs. But you know, that’s not quite true – we’re changing too, Though the other way round: See, larvae are more evolved than their parents – Their bodies the new kids in town. But we, you and me, start out as a fish With proto-gills and a tail to swish In a primordial sea of warm – Then it’s time to move, to shed our skin, And let our reptile-selves begin: Engage, evolve, transform ! It’s time to metamorphosise, We mongrel robots in disguise, From instar into more-bizarre, Our restless genes must shift and swarm And take this blood-cold world by storm By becoming the mammals, the furry mammals we are ! But don’t stop now, the urge ain’t gone – I don’t know what’s next, but I feel it coming on…
Some worms are roundworms and some worms are flat, Some worms are skinny and some worms are fat, Some worms are stripy and some worms are brown, Some dress in velvet and some sport a crown, Some feed on slurry and some feed on nuts, Some live in gardens and some live in guts.
Some worms are serpents and some worms are bugs, Some worms are dragons and some worms are slugs, Some worms are speedy and some worms are slow, Some worms are eyeless and some worms can glow. Some on the surface and some underground, Some worms are flatworms and some worms are round.
A year ago they built this flat, And only I reside herein. So how precisely is it that In just one year, my welcome mat Has ushered all these spiders in ? I’m not allowed to keep a cat, But pets a-plenty hide and spin.
Have they blown-in as eggs so soon, Or spiderlings on silk baloons ? Or hitched a ride upon a rat ? (I really hope it isn’t that !) Or did they creep up ev’ry stair I’m on the seventh floor, you know ! I’m sure they’re here – their webs say so !
“jellyfish – OED first citation, 1796 medusa – in this sense, 1752 sea-nettle – 1601”
What did we call the jellyfish Before we called them that ? Aristotle was the first To note what they were at – He called them akelephe In his mighty omnibus – While Pliny called them sea-lungs – That is, pulmo marinus.
At some point, they were likened To Medusa, with the snakes – So when Linnaeus crowned them that, He simply upped the stakes. But what about in English, From before the mighty Swede ? Shakespeare never mentioned them, Nor Caxton, Chaucer, Bede.
I guess those Middle Ages folk Just neither knew, nor cared – Though fishermen, at lease, you’d think, Would need to be prepared. Sea nettle, I suppose Could make the strongest claims, But hands that felt the stings were not The hands that wrote down names.
Yet surely they are tailor-made To populate in Hell ? It seems their nightmares missed a trick, When jellies did not gel. They kinda look like floating heads, (Though clearly going bald). Much like Cthulhu’s nameless ones, Who knows what they were called ?
‘Jelly’ entered Middle English between 1350-1400 via Old French, ultimately from the Latin root meaning ‘to freeze’. nbsp;’Fish’ is Anglo-Saxon.
Detail of tentacle of Physalia microscoped by Rob Growler. Each of those finger-like projections is considered to be a separate creature. Or perhaps each separate tentacle is a single zooid – there seems to be much confusion on this.
Life in the Colonies
What’s the plural of man o’ war ? ‘Men’, or ‘wars’, or stays the same ? (And why are you so Portuguese ?) All told, a silly name.
But scientists insist That you’re already plurals, each. That what we see are vibrant cities Washed up on the beach.
See, ev’ry egg, once fertilised, Divides in two, and two again, Until a little larva, sized No larger than a grain.
You then begin your budding, Popping clones that stay attached. So from a single egg, it seems, A hundred brothers hatched.
Genetic’ly identical, But not such dead-on ringers, Specialising as they do, As feeders, breeders, or as stingers,
Sharing nutrients and tissue, And even gender too, we note. And one (and only one) will swell Into a gas-filled float.
But are you really colonies ? So should we view your ev’ry clone As sep’rate creatures ? Even though That can’t survive to swim alone ?
Perhaps it’s the lack of a nervous system That makes you many, not one – But do your individual zooids Each have their own, or also none ?
If the latter, why are these animals, And not mini-colonies all of their own ? I guess the stingers at least must feel A sense of touch (though they act alone).
Infact, the latest research says That they do all communicate yet – Though less as a mainframe brain, as such, And more of an intranet.
So, much the same as your jellyfish-cousins, Which are single, the sciences agree – I guess it’s just a matter of degrees, And the whims of the arbit’ry.
It’s like you’re halfway between your single-celled past, And their unified future – If we look close, we can still see the joins, Though they’re barely more than a suture.
Victorians proposed their status, As best as they could see – And we repeat their holy writ, Afraid to disagree.
Now evolution is wholly unplanned, But teamwork is what wins the cup – Yet the scientists would round you down, Where I would round you up.
You’re just like us – we’re not so special, We’re all made of cells, For all we call in pedants To deny the parallels –
Especially when we realise That zooids cannot change their role – From stems, they are assigned a job for life, To build a greater whole.
That sounds alot like organs, doesn’t it ? Time we came to terms. For we began the same as you – A ball of cells, a swarm of germs.
So as for what we call you, Just what kind of things you are ? ‘Men’ or ‘wars’, it matters not – Let’s call you singular.
Perhaps the boffins have got it right, and syphonophores really are collectives and are fundamentally different from single animals like jellyfishes. But they’re gonna havta do a much better job of explaining it. So kudos to The Octopus Lady for her illuminating video which is the first attempt I’ve seen to actually ask the question “but why do we think these are colonies…?” Her answer – because although the zooids cannot survive alone, it is slow starvation that kills them (because they cannot feed themselves in solo), not biologiocal breakdown as would quickly befall any of our shed cells.This feels like a decicion based on no more than a gut feeling, and until it is quantified somehow, I don’t want to hear a peep from all of you factoid vomiters out there who just love a sneery “well, actually…”
Rhyming Couplets 