Aha! I knew there was some good weather left in the North Bay, before winter sets in. This was the day. Or, as I prefer to call it, the first day of the rest of the summer. It’s been what they call a “mild” summer here, by which they mean “not hot enough.” Today it was hot enough to wake up the birds and the bugs, even the ones on the verge of hibernation or migration.

The wasps that nest under the eave outside my front door were swarming madly this afternoon in the autumn heat. That nest has to go this winter, but I can’t bring myself to try anything while it’s being occupied. It’s not just the danger of reenacting a scene from a bad William Shatner movie, although that’s incentive enough to leave it alone. At one point this afternoon there must have been three dozen wasps ascending from the ground to the nest, all at once as if in the midst of a coordinated airlift. Which it might well have been, for all I know.

We seem to have adopted a pet butterfly here at the rancho. I’m a little mystified by this creature’s behavior, because it spent most of the day fluttering around my back porch, where there is almost nothing that could attract it. No flowers, not much color, not even any water. I don’t go out there myself very often, because it’s so uninviting, covered as it is with overgrown blackberry brambles. The butterfly is more than welcome, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to what the attraction is.

This afternoon when I opened the front door to walk out to the mailbox, I stopped short before opening the screen door. Something was attached to the screen, and it took me a minute to recognize it as a praying mantis. Then I took a closer look and saw that it was two praying mantises, at least temporarily. The larger one was devouring her mate in the traditional post-coital meal. I’d actually never seen this in person before, but it was enough to make me grab my camera.

She wasn’t a widow yet at this point, because he was still alive. He wasn’t struggling, but I could see his legs and antennae twitching. When a piece of his wing fell out of her mouth to the ground, she just moved on to the thorax. Or the abdomen; I forget which is which in praying mantises.

As time went on for the next hour or so, he got smaller and smaller, but the last time I looked his head was still moving around casually, as she munched on the other end. A few minutes later they were both gone. I opened the door to see if they were nearby, but all I found was a piece of wing stuck to the screen. I left it there in his memory. Or because I didn’t especially want to touch it.