Simple, classic, and unlike style, attractiveA teaser, from Style Zero
The ladies swooned, to be brought to life only with a clod of chicken scat up a nostril. Men secreted themselves, unbuttoned sleeves as fat and slashed and colourful as candied-fruit-stuffed pheasants, and blew their noses into the embroidered cloth. Each man was suddenly as ashamed to be seen in what he stood in, as Adam was in the garden that suddenly wasn't Paradise.—from my upcoming story "How Galligaskins Sloughed the Scourge" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #46.
lacewing larva?
ReplyDeleteoooh, I don't know if you saw my cowardly title for the pic, but it is "terror of the museum" which could mean anything. I had thought that it was a young larva (maybe only at its second moult) in the dermestid family. Perhaps the native carpet beetle Anthrenocerus australis. There are many of these larvae around my balcony, usually tucked down in the grot of spiderwebs, shed spider skins, beetle shells and limbs, moth wings, and the detritus that antechinuses, dunnarts, and possums leave in the cracks, corners and slats of wood.
ReplyDeleteThe cast skins of these larvae are so common on the walls outside that it looks at times like someone has thrown genetically-weirdified peanut skins around. But then, like this specimen who was prowling on the sunlit rail, this is hardly working-in-the-dark behaviour, and they're supposed to find light abhorrent. On the other hand, lacewings are abundant here, lacewing eggs being attached on their silk cords, to the shadowed side of every balcony support upstairs, and even to our shadowed front door. This looks slightly like the emerging larvae, but not like any of the prey-seeking instars I have seen. The hairs aren't splaying from the body in a radial direction. The mandibles don't look like much. And the body isn't flattened, nor long. Maybe it's a larva of an entirely nother beast?
The problem is: my ignorance, despite poring over many books. So many times I don't post a portrait of some fascinator in nature because my attempts to find out what it is, come up murky at best. Insects just don't look like their diagrams, too many times. So if you, or anyone can say for sure what this is, I'd love to know.