Bugging Out

An earlier post about getting close to your subject when taking pictures included a couple of pictures of bugs. I was inspired by beautiful pictures Susan took of thistles. Well, she has done it again, this time with a picture of a spider fat with eggs.

So, yesterday Sam lost one of Boyd's Lego lightsabers in the grass. The red, Sith one! These things are about one inch long, so let's say it is not likely we would find it somewhere on the lawn. While futiley crawling around, though, we saw a winged ant and decided to try the macro function on the camera and see how close we could get. Here it is:

We followed it for awhile and here's what we saw:

You might not notice initially, but in the first picture the ant is missing one of its wings. It is reaching back and has placed a rear leg on the remaining wing. In the second picture, the ant has used its leg to pull off the remaining wing! In the third picture, you can see the ant, wingless! I don't know why it did that -- was it a defense mechanism, or was it a normal part of its development?

Good stuff, but what does it have to do with family history?

I think Grandpa inspired my love of science and of taking pictures. I think Grandma and her family history writings inspired me to put it all down in this blog. I will never be the scientist that Grandpa is or the writer that Grandma is, but I am working on the photography thing. Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa, for your inspiration!