All Things Bright and Beautiful

When I dug out my wildlife pond last summer, I was literally humming "All Things Bright and Beautiful."  Because, that's the point of a wildlife pond-- this little unfiltered body of water is designed to support all creatures great and small.

I'm really excited to see what emerges from the pond this spring.  My son and I were poking around the plants, looking for new growth and hoping for frog eggs.  But what we found was decidedly more unsettling.

I think my friends would agree that I have a pretty high tolerance for the seamier side of nature.  Spiders?  Come on down.  Slugs?  Cool-- just don't eat my delphiniums.  But this new pond creature?  Yeah, it caused me to actually recoil in horror and, admittedly, self-preservation.

Copyright 2012 Beatriz Moisset

I got this image from Bugguide.net, because, honestly, the last thing on my mind was taking a photo of this two inch horror, literally called a rat-tailed maggot.

As my job as parent is to inspire awe and wonder in the natural world, I stifled my shudders and tightly feigned excitement.  "Look at this, uh, cool... thing!" I said as it lurched itself back into the water.  My own larva did think it was pretty cool, but ran off to play with an empty box soon after that.  I can't blame him, but I do envy his ability to move on so easily.

If anyone is still reading, you might be interested (repulsed?) to know that that tail is actually a breathing tube.  And, you might be comforted to know that it will eventually become a drone fly, a relatively cute little pollinator.

By Uoaei1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37348257