30 days of happiness - day 22

Happiness is:
Walking Sticks! No, not that kind, the insect kind! I've always been fascinated by insects, well at least most of them anyway. I will admit to having very strong prejudices against certain kinds (the ones people call an exterminator for...) but walking sticks, praying mantis, ants, bees etc. have always sparked my interest. My mother tells a story about when I was a little girl, and she would pay me a penny for each tomato hornworm I picked off her tomato plants. I could never 'dispose' of the critters, instead keeping them in a jar with holes poked in the lid, feeding them with tomato leaves and weeds. We were getting ready to leave for vacation when I yelled, "Just a minute!" and ran out behind the house. My mother found me putting ALL the hornworms back on the tomato plants, and my explanation was, "There wouldn't be anyone around to feed them while we're gone..."

So you can imagine how happy I was to find walking sticks here at the new house! I thought they only lived in the jungles of South America or someplace equally exotic, not the Iowa hills!


This photo was taken close to the back door. At first glance I thought, "What is that stick doing in a spiderweb?" then, "Wait a minute..." Yep. Poor little guy. But I guess the spider had a day of happiness. It's all in the way you look at things, right?