Homops and Hemips

Among humans there is great cultural strife between the homos and hemen. The same is true among the bugs. Only among the bugs, the culture war is between the homops and hemips. Mercy! There is no peaceable kingdom anywhere on this tiny planet. For the homops and hemips are everywhere, each afflicting the other with every conceivable wickedness. No peace, anywhere! No peace!

Even tiny wasps that you might think would be oblivious to the great culture war are, instead, made so nervous that they have been given the family name, Figitidae. That’s right, the constant strife occurring all around these tiny wasps has made them so nervous and stressed out, they fidget all the time. Thus the family name. The worst afflicted of the family Figitidae are the members of the subfamily Figitinae. These figits are the most nervous organisms known to modern science.

OK. Many may recall the scepticism of the Druids regarding Asclepias oenotherioides as a host plant for queens and monarchs. OK. Now the Cow Barn Druids have proof. Look what Rayetta found today. It’s like a queen caterpillar and a monarch caterpillar on the same dern Asclepias oenotherioides. Why my goodness! We were all just plumb fucked naked metaphorically by such a phenomena.

Monarch so the other one with the maroon is the queen.

And for those especially ignorant Americanos who don't really believe two species of milkweed caterpillars would cohabit on the same plant, here's that.

All righty. The Cow Barn is now happy with our macro photography capability. Short of professional equipment, we now have what it takes. So we officially recommend this combo: Olympus 35mm macro for the inert, Sigma 150mm macro for the small and mobile, and the Olympus 70-300mm for the bigger and easily spooked. Yes. An average amateur naturalist needs the equivalent of all three of these devices, plus a microscope and a camera to couple up with it.