Ray's Thought for the Day - Dangerous Flies

Thank you Rayetta for acknowledging the arrival of your Sun God Trainee brother, me.

My love for the scarlet fly, that is as large as the head of the handsomest man in Ireland is well-known. Yepper, despite having two beautiful girl friends, my love for the scarlet fly persists, anyway, and in spite of the distractions those twain beautiful girl friends afford. Yet scarlet flies of that size are rare in these parts. So I must make do with any old flies.

Now the deal with any old flies, apart from the incredibly lovely, aromatic and melodius scarlet fly, is they are really hard to sight identify, especially when efforts towards sight identication are more like whatever efforts. That's what I am up to now, whatever efforts. I can though, sight identify, generically, those dangerous flies that the vulgar name robber flies. I have accumulated pictorial evidence of seven or eight different species of robber flies at the CB. Yet, I know not what any of them are,taxonomically wise. Whatever!

Robber flies have a reputation as killers. Maybe! One of the CB robber flies is definitely a honey bee killer. I have espied that one's murderous behavior often enough. But that one, the honey bee killer, is not the featured dipteran at this nonce. No. The featured dipteran presumptive killer is the one depicted adjacent. This one is the biggest robber fly espied at the CB to date, way bigger than the honey bee killer. It is scarily large, almost two inches from stem to stern, and it is aggressive towards the photographically forward.

But its most interesting feature is very hairy tibias. Those are remarkably hairy tibias. Those tibias are, in fact, wooly.

Mercy! I am overburdened with new yet interesting insects. I know! I shall engage my bosom companion to help out with all this insect taxonomy. Crumby shall lead me out of this wilderness of ignorance. Except for the grasshoppers, I need to keep the grasshoppers to myself.