As I had left my phone outside on the garden bench, I gently lifted the beetle onto a piece of paper to take it outside to photograph it.
Placing the beetle on the stone table, I found it to be still and lifeless. Poor little insect, I thought!
Saddened by the sight of the beetle lying still, I started to sketch the garden view when suddenly a buzzing sound distracted me and I caught sight of the beetle coming alive to fly away leaving me to my solitude outside under the shade of the arbour.
How cleverly it had camouflaged itself appearing to be lifeless!
How wonderful nature is!
My dear father (a botanist by training and a born nature lover ) had told me when I was just a little girl, very many long years ago that every creature from the minutest to the most gargantuan, protects itself in myriads of astonishingly clever ways! Survival at any cost!
My father had introduced me to the famous Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre a French naturalist, entomologist and author known for the lively style of his popular books on the lives of insects. We had a book in our home titled :The Insect Man.
Fabre used to go out into Nature to learn about insects by lying on the forest floor for hours on end. Such was his passion and interest for studying Nature and insects that he was called the insect man!
The more we learn we realise how much there is to know!
Today the chance sighting of the 'little big beetle' stirred my mind and took me back in time !
It had the power to make me travel into the past, stir memories of my dear father and connected me to Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre who was born nearly 2 centuries ago 21st December 1823.
As my son would say as a little boy :I want to invent a Time travelling machine!
And yes, we have our own individual, magical, travelling machine - our Mind that more than often takes us on rides!
Thank you little beetle for making me fly into the past with your beautiful flight out into Nature from the bondage of being trapped inside the house!
