Attack of the Cute, and Sometimes Not So Cute

Something calls to us when we see or hear something that feels or looks innocent. It’s true when we are falling in love, listening to beautiful music, or, in today’s topic, interacting with and photographing babies and animals.

Guinea fowl, shown this week in my driveway, are a regular sight where I live in Byng. My next-door neighbor likes having them around, both as fun birds to raise, but also because eat lots of bugs, including ticks.

My next door neighbor Mike Nipps loves keeping chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, dogs, and one grumpy goat. I am especially fond of the farm birds because they are always out and about, eating ticks and other troublesome bugs.

The neighbors also showed me some baby guineas, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph them yet. They are super-cute.

While I was outside the other day, I saw something not-so-cute that I run across two or three times a month: a red wasp dragging a large wolf spider. I’m not a bugs and birds expert, but it is my understanding that the wasp stuns the larger spider, then drags it away to its lair.

It's easy to look at an image like this, of a rusty spider wasp dragging a paralyzed wolf spider away, and be revulsed by its cruelty, but it's nature's way, and it keeps the world functioning. — It’s easy to look at an image like this, of a rusty spider wasp dragging a paralyzed wolf spider away, and be revulsed by its cruelty, but it’s nature’s way, and it keeps the world functioning.

I admit to being “triggered” by spiders, most of which a far less threatening to me that other creatures like the wasp in this spot, but I try to take a deep breath and usher them outside of I can.