Want to hear a story that has nothing to do with elections? Read on.
I was out in my back yard this afternoon. It was a nice day. The cold snap of last week is history, lots of sunshine today here in Florida.
I was poking around, deciding what further landscaping I want to start this winter. Back in February, when I was absolutely fed up with what I call the rape of the forest behind my home, I decided to turn my 7500 square feet of suburbia into a little bit of woodland.
I ripped out all my St Augustine turf and replaced it with alternate layers of straw and oak leaves. My neighbors were busy raking leaves from their lawns; I went around with the van and collected black trash bags of leaves, more than 50 bags in all. This, plus a dozen bales of hay, was all I needed for a groundcover of forest duff. But that’s a story for another day.
I planted native shrubs and trees; they are mostly slow-growing and I wanted shade for the back porch so I also set out a few young papaya trees in a sunny spot. And that is what this story is about.
Normally I’d have to wait until next Spring to have fruit from these trees, but we’ve had an unusually wet Fall and the papaya trees, along with everything else, seem to have doubled in size. They are about 10 feet tall. Early in October they began to put out thick creamy blossoms at eye level, one at each juncture of stem and branch. Then little baby papayas followed the blossoms.
The papayas resulting from the first blossoms are now about the size of my fist. I noticed that they had beads of sticky white papaya juice on them. Further examination showed that this wasn’t the papaya leaking naturally, the fruit was being punctured by a flying, syrup-imbibing insect. I don’t know what type of insect was having lunch on my papayas; they were about one inch long and half an inch tall with gossamer wings, long slender legs, and an equally long
proboscis.
The proboscis was being used to puncture the skin of the papaya. One insect would make up to twenty puncture marks in the same fruit. Each puncture leaked syrup and, as the insect moved from spot to spot, its feet became covered with syrup. Then the syrup hardened and the insects appeared to be stuck to the fruit. What happened next told me these snacking bugs were females.
As each of the ladies began struggling to free herself, a male zoomed up from behind and nailed her. Now she had two reasons to free herself and she struggled harder. Her boyfriend kept his position and, as she continued to struggle, she pulled loose from the syrup and they flew off together in tandem.
Isn’t Mother Nature clever?