Insect death

Crane flies are those irritating 'daddy long legs' that crash around your lamp shade of an evening, proving almost impossible to capture without destroying them in the process. I found this one's desiccated body where it had perished unseen and I kept it because it's beautiful in its way, with the tensile delicacy of an early aircraft, and perfectly adapted for the life it led - before it encountered an electric light bulb.

My fabric of my home hosts several sorts of invertebrate, or creepy-crawlies if you prefer, either as residents or as visitors. As well as cranes there are the usual flies, spiders, woodlice, silverfish, beetles, ants, bees and wasps, the moths and butterflies that flutter through the windows, the slugs and snails  that occasionally slide across the threshold, plus less obvious bugs such as cat fleas and ticks and the invisible mites that live on our own bodies. Most of these I do little or nothing to eliminate and I don't use insecticides or disinfectants if I can help it. This is an insect-friendly household.

But the wider world is not. A 'long read' newspaper article today [funny the way  pieces of serious reportage have to be distinguished now from the bite-sized snippets of info we are constantly being drip-fed]  describes in painful detail the escalating loss of insect life in the world. Figures suggest a 75% drop in the numbers of flying insects in parts of western Europe. But it's not just the disappearance of the bug-splattered summer windscreens and the wasp-invaded autumn picnics  that we might remember from childhood, but  a global phenomenom  occurring even in parts of the world less populated and less chemically-farmed than the industrialized countries, including  for example areas of virgin forest in South America. 

Insectageddon is a catchy term for what's happening but the serious  point is that 'higher' forms of existence - vertebrates, mammals, humankind -  could not survive the loss of the invertebrate foundation that underpins life as we know it. Please do take 10 minutes to read the article I've pinpointed because the more people who are aware of the value of insects the more chance there is of slowing their plunge to extinction. Perhaps it won't happen if we cherish all the tiny lives around us and the caring spreads in ever-widening circles.