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Gotta crawl, gotta crawl, to the ugly bug ball

oakhill.co.za

“Gotta crawl, gotta crawl
To the ugly bug ball
To the ball, to the ball
And a happy time we'll have there
One and all
At the ugly bug ball.”

Disney knows how to capture an audience with a combination of heartwarming characters, snappy tunes, and memorable lyrics. 

This jazzy passage from one of my favorite childhood songs still makes my toes tap when I think of Burl Ives’ gravelly voice crooning to that fuzzy caterpillar crawling across the hand of his young co-star. All I have to do these late summer days to bring this rhythm to mind is step into a flowerbed where wasps, bees, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, and other creatures hum and drone as they waltz, tango, and cha cha from one blossom to another.

By mid to late August, many western Kansas domestic blooms have passed their peak color and size, looking moth-eaten and bedraggled. Swarms of huge, hungry grasshoppers chew supersize hunks out of petals while hot sun dulls previously vivid colors. Disregarding the tired appearance of the plants, insect admirers dance lazily from one pistil and stamen to another in this enormous outdoor ballroom.

On any given day, our Russian sage hosts more than a dozen slow moving honeybees swirling languidly in ¾ time from one lavender blossomed stem to another. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were drunk and didn’t care about human proximity. When these fellows tire of this section of the giant dance floor, they circle to nearby beds of zinnias, bachelor buttons, and cosmos. One place to pirouette seems as good as another to them.

Nearby, wasps hover among autumn-yellow fennel blossoms, sipping delicately as they should at such a polite function. A colorful green, black, yellow, and white swallowtail caterpillar serves as the well- camouflaged director of the orchestra that entertains these visitors to the Ugly Bug Ball. Without neglecting its duties as maestro, it inches up and down stems, chewing courteously.

With their ready-to-party pink accented wings, large sphinx or hummingbird moths flutter delicately for their size in and out of the centers of petunia and zinnias. These insects are the size of tiny ruby throats and hover over blooms much like the creatures who gave them their nickname. Because hummers migrate through this time of year, pay close attention or you might confuse these guests at the soiree.

Dragonflies, cicadas, horse and deer flies, spiders dangling from gossamer webs, and more swirl by like an energized chorus line. It doesn’t take much to imagine their humming, droning, and buzzing translated into the lyrics that began this column. Anyone listening might recognize even more stanzas from this Summer Magic favorite song. The dressed-for-a-party caterpillar creeping across my fennel might sing

“Once a lonely caterpillar sat and cried
To a sympathetic beetle by his side
"I've got nobody to hug
I'm such an ugly bug."

It wouldn’t be long before one could hear

Then a spider and a dragonfly replied,
"If you're serious and want to win a bride
Come along with us to the glorious
Annual Ugly Bug Ball."

This time of year is one big Ugly Bug Ball.  Enjoy the dancers.