Violet

This is Violet. I found her in a bowl of windfall apples. Her full name is Violet Ground Beetle or Carabus violaceus although 'ground beetle' sounds like an ingredient that an entomophagist might keep in the spice rack (add two teaspoons of ground beetle...)

Violet is carnivorous, a nocturnal predator on other invertebrates - particularly slugs. She's a fast mover on her long legs but she doesn't fly because her purple-edged elytra (wing-cases) are fused. She measures about 3cm in length and lives for 9 months. She seems lively enough at present but she may not survive the onset of winter. If I find her dead one day I'll think of this lovely poem by Nobel-winner Wislawa Szymborska who herself died earlier this year.

A dead beetle lies on the path through the field.
Three pairs of legs folded neatly on its belly.
Instead of death's confusion, tidiness and order.
The horror of this sight is moderate,
its scope is strictly local, from the wheat grass to the mint.
The grief is quarantined.
The sky is blue.

To preserve our peace of mind, animals die
more shallowly: they aren't deceased, they're dead.
They leave behind, we'd like to think, less feeling and less world,
departing, we suppose, from a stage less tragic.
Their meek souls never haunt us in the dark,
they know their place,
they show respect.

And so the dead beetle on the path
lies unmourned and shining in the sun.
One glance at it will do for meditation -
clearly nothing much has happened to it.
Important matters are reserved for us,
for our life and our death, a death
that always claims the right of way.