Big Bug

Big Bug
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

I close with two small snapshots of daily life at home for me. The

first greeted me outside my door one morning upon waking up. Yes, as

you saw in the walking tour, we do live in an embarrassingly large and

luxurious house, but it’s still the tropics and still a developing

country in all the good and challenging ways. We’ve got lizards in the

house often — which we welcome since we sleep under mosquito nets; we

get more flies and bugs than I can describe. And one of the wonders of

Nanning and southern China in general are the HUGE and gorgeous

butterflies that flutter everywhere. This one’s a moth, with a body

the size of the palm of my hand. I did not see it with wings open, but

it was beautiful. Less beautiful are the gigantic spiders (legspan

bigger than my hand, body size of thumbtip) that appear on the walls

occasionally. Then I’m glad of the mosquito net. I have NO idea if any

of these spiders are venomous. Oh well.