Prince of the Undergrowth

There is, somewhere, a little village; a tiny dot on the maps of history. It has a post box, a telephone booth (not one of the nice red ones), a tavern/impromptu post office, a modernized farm, a burnt-down hall, a cold church with accompanying overgrown graveyard, a very small council estate, a scattering of cottages, a large vicarage, some houses-on-the-hill, a small village hall and a lifeless caravan site. There is a quaint yet thin river inhabited by lazy fish, startled waterfowl, the occasional heron, smokes of midges, miscellaneous man-mind disposable plastic paraphernalia and watercress.

One of cottages has an allotment, the one-time pride and joy of its former inhabitant; now an overgrown nettle-ridden jungle of blackcurrant bushes, bramble, briar and mysterious rhubarb. If you were to crawl on your belly through the loamy wet earth of this forgotten allotment, scratching yourself on botanical teeth and unknown matter as you do so, you would reach a small patch of moss covered soil. An unseen thrush cackles in the holly bush overhead somewhere, and if you gaze upwards you can follow the flight of wielding gulls as they drift in the currents and dream of the ocean, and of tractors ploughing fields. Someone, perhaps as much as ten or twenty years ago, has stacked up some terracotta roofing tiles. Nettles spiral out around the back of this small pile, and snails hold silent moots, perhaps in mourning.

This pile of tiles conceals a secret. There is something cold and manipulative lying in wait in the cool soil underneath. Woodlice bravely loiter on the under surface of these cracked orange tiles, tracing glyphic patterns in the dark and lonely world of rotting leaves. Underneath the mulch and fungal roots and waiting in the dark he sits, brooding. He has been there since late October, but now he feels the new warmth seeping through the earth to his skin like oil. His large filmy eyes slowly open, glistening in the darkness. A slow grin spreads across his soft face, thick tongue pulsing out in an experimental taste of the stale air that encases him beneath the ground. He is ready for worms, and slugs, and beetles. For he is bufo bufo; Prince of the Undergrowth, and he’s ready for spring.

Coleopterism

I want to live inside a beetle.

You can attempt entry into beetles via special tunnels, I hear.

Hundreds of people live inside beetles.

They like it there.

I want to live with them.

Beetles are filled with light though, you know.

They eat special leaves in special forests.

They are large…but not big enough to live in, by any means.

But...?

Hence the tunnels: They make you extremely small.

I want to live inside a beetle.

Beetles contain quiet forests and dark lakes.

The beetle worlds are maintained by ethereal spirits.

These spirits are greatly feared and should be revered.

I fear! I revere!

They are dark, dark and wet,

Dark and wet and lonely.

I want to live inside a beetle.

Coleoptera

I’ve got a strong fascination with Coleopterans, the ‘sheaved wings’.

Many of you might well have heard me talking at length about them. I’ve written about them now and again. I’ve owned a few in my time. They are, or course, beetles.

Beetles are a perfect example of nature and evolution. The thoughts and feelings I associate with beetles I could probably have placed on any insect. Beetles are shiny though. They are dark. They are beady.

They are a set of perfect commands encased in an exoskeleton, simple circuits that work to a set of strict stimuli. Light, warmth, moisture, height, relation to each other, relation to food, relation to predator…these are the factors that control our beetle friends. They are an immense army of perfect biological droids, working solidly almost constantly. Beetles have no eyelids, so they can’t sleep. Right now its daylight outside, so the majority of the British coleopterans will be waiting for the night. I can picture them, waiting under their stones or in cracks in rotting wood. Beady eyes staring…not moving for hour after hour. Are they thinking? Nope…just waiting for the next stimuli to command them.

Did you know there are more known species of beetle than there are for any other animal in the animal kingdom? That’s 350,000 described species. That’s 40% of all known insect species. I say described because we haven’t had enough time in our existence to document every species. Current estimations of unknown species of beetle are between 5-8 million. That’s a fair amount of beetles.

The first time a girl made me cry was when I was about six years old, when I was a pupil of St. Margaret’s (St.Maggot’s) Primary School in Durham. It was a sports day. I remember it painfully well. A clear memory. A terrible one. We were sitting on a bench waiting our turn for something…probably running from one place to another (Nazi youth anyone?) and I glanced down at the grass, where to my pleasure I saw a friendly little black beetle. He was shiny and black, and quick. Most likely he was a Common Black Ground beetle, (Pterostichus melanarius).

“Please don’t kill it!” I said to the unpleasant girl next to me who had noticed me looking at him.

“What, like this?” she said, and daintily ground her foot into my new beetle friend.

I did cry, but she just laughed.