It’s been a while since I’ve posted a woodlouse and well…I still have a few to go. This is yet another of the rather fast truck-yard woodlice that made much of my summer more bearable than possible under non-woodlouse conditions. It’s amazing how a few people, a few crustaceans, a few insects, and a camera can all make a city tolerable. Cities are, after all, strange and hectic places: colder and more impersonal than we care to admit. Young cities like Chicago just haven’t been around long enough to grow up, and well…based on Chicago’s pre-adolescent years, I rather doubt that this city will grow into a gentleman or a lady; that’s just not a part of the Midwestern American makeup. Gentlemen and Ladies come from more coastal regions, despite the number of gentlemen and ladies who actually DO live in this city. I’ve noticed that at least the human gentlemen and ladies tend to leave the city after one point or another…or they arrive in the city from somewhere else, before leaving it again. Chicago is a transient city: no one famous is actually gets famous by staying here. They leave, get famous somewhere else, and at that point, Chicago wakes up and claims them. Ah, but if we put that sad little quirk aside, Chicago is home to wonderful crustaceans. They live everywhere on the planet, virtually, and Chicago woodlice are quite a varied group of critters. The common “armadillo” types are…well…common here. More “woodlouse-sorts” of woodlice also live here, as do rare pink ones. I have yet to actually photograph a pink one, but they’re numerous enough to make their presence felt among woodlouse observers. Their big, surprisingly fast armadillo-type cousins are the ones everyone here knows. They’re the only wood-louse species known to roll up in to a neat sphere. I took this photograph last summer, during the height of woodlouse season. The truckyard was rife with life: grasshoppers of two different species, woodlice, ticks (monster ticks the size of Guam) and hamburger-stealing guard dogs. One of the dogs managed to pick up a tick and the truckers (admittedly a tough bunch of guys) were rather intimidated by the size of that particular blood sucker. They were convinced that it would drain the dog in question of ALL of his blood, and they were surprised that I’d even get close enough to the critter to bribe the dog with…well…remnants of a gyros, while I drowned the tick with kerosene in a shampoo bottle cap. You’d be surprised at what you’d find in a truck-yard. The dog, creatively named Rover, didn’t notice the wonderful kerosene scent his ear achieved. He was more interested in the gyros remnants I’d given him. The kerosene-drowned tick detached, continued to drown, and enjoyed a wonderful little funeral pyre that, unfortunately, escaped my camera. The tick survived the kerosene but not the fire. For that matter, the shampoo bottle cap didn’t survive either. It became a freeform sculpture with tick ashes embedded in it. And not far away, woodlice ambled through undergrowth and leaf-litter. Following the tick immolation, I went in search of woodlice, while the truck-yard dog followed me around acting as my assistant. I found a male woodlouse (yes, I checked…once you know what naughty-bits to look for, it’s easy to distinguish males from females.) And what I got for my efforts was a near head-on collision with a woodlouse, on a rotting log, reddened here an there with an interesting and fragrant breed of fungal smut. I didn’t touch the smut, as that’s the stuff that’s responsible for the Book of Revelations. I was interested in woodlice and not fungus-induced religious experiences. Funny how smut, once ingested—even by accident—induces the same intense hallucinations in everyone…but that’s a rant for another post! As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting...and I hope you're having a great week.