Macro Monday: The Oothica

I suspect some people might be shuddering or shivering right now, but I gotta warn you: some bug macros are gonna pop up here now and again. I’ll be kind enough and keep spider macros behind links, but insect macros are a total delight for me. And besides, this shot? It’s awesome! I don’t mean specifically my capture of it, but rather, what it captures.

We had an oothica — that’s like, Moon Language for a Mantis Egg, by the way — in the back yard of our last house, and I wandered past just as the damn thing was hatching. And it’s fascinating to watch because this crusty pork-rind-looking egg busts open and starts disgorging bugs that do not look very much like praying mantises, at least not at first. No, when they pop out they’re kind of grub-like, somewhat unformed, and then, as they enter reality from their transdimensional oothica gateway, they begin to take shape, filling their exoskeletons with extraplanetary insect ghosts and becoming proper baby mantids.

Praying mantises are super-fascinating to watch. They’re smarter than your average buggy, it seems — like spiders, they can be capable hunters. I have literally thrown a mantis a bug and the mantis has caught it. In rare instances they can catch and kill birds. Watching them calls to mind what it would be like regarding an alien. I sat and watched a praying mantis one day regard each car that passed it by. As if it pondered catching one and eating it, just for the laughs.

I have other shots from that hatching, too, that I like:

And

Interesting point of trivia, actually —

That first photo, the one at the top, is my first published photo credit.

It’s in this book: The Field Guide to Insects.

My second professional photo credit was the cover of this book — The Bones: Us And Our Dice, edited by Will Hindmarch. I don’t seem to have that photo uploaded to my Flickr, so the cover is right here (ah, back in the days of my RPG-writing life):

(That book is sadly not available in e-book format.)

Anyway, so, yeah.

I don’t count myself as a professional photographer, to be clear — just a lucky amateur.

Let’s see, what else is going on?

Ah, yes.

This is your last day to get in on some very big e-book sales.

All three Miriam Black books, all three Heartland books, and Atlanta Burns?

All on sale this month. And this month ends today, so.

Please to enjoy, and may Monday whimper beneath your boot.

*wyverns away*