The POTW: Verse Til It Hurts

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POTW #850
(Week of 1 September, 2013)

    
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Yesterday I was out in the yard and I came across some really creepy-looking bugs living on a branch of a lemon tree. They looked like little fluffy pillows with a nasty armor plate and I was pretty sure they were not from Earth. I tweeted a picture and someone identified them within a half-hour (thanks, Chase): cottony cushion scale, vicious plant pests that fasten themselves to a citrus branch and suck the sap out of it until it dies. They nearly destroyed the entire California citrus industry in the late nineteenth century, but fortunately somebody figured out that they have a couple of natural predators: Australian ladybugs, which like to eat them; and a type of fly that will lay its eggs inside the scale so that the larvae basically devour it from the inside out. Two lessons to be learned: first, crowd-sourcing on Twitter is a great way to get information about vague questions like "what the heck is that?" (although it did fail me with the sand dollar/barnacle mystery), and second, nature is really, really ruthless.

The Big Brunch

When predators are made of meat
They make a toothy tasty treat
The merry-go-round of eat and be eaten
A cycle that cannot be beaten
An insect lays its eggs in you
Its larvae use your guts as food
Your sharpened claws won't help you now
The chewer has become the chow
There is no top of a chain in a loop
The world is a meal and we're all in the soup
It's nobody's party and nobody's fault
I guess you might as well pass the salt

Copyright © 2013 by Dave Grossman

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