The Female Is More Deadly Than The Male

My blogger pal, ExBootneck, over at http://themellowjihadi.com/ posted this today and I had to pass it on.  

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Huron’s and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale –
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, –
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger - Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fiber of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions - not in these her honor dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons - even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish - like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it came that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice - which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern - shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

All I can say, guys, is don’t tell your woman.  She may get it in her mind to actually prove her deadly talent.  Hell, she may even start to believe this... stuff.

 

The Dragonfly

I am slow, I know it.  You know it.  My teachers and professors knew it, too.  So this may be common knowledge to all you peep’s.  It’s just that I never had a real reason or desire to know anything about a dragonfly. Until today!

I was in the rocking chair on the porch this morning watching the birds and rabbits and stuff when I saw this pretty green dragonfly.  It would hover over a blade of grass or the concrete walkway (a new addition to the abode, plus a concrete driveway all the way down to the dirt road.)  They remind me of a Korean War bubble glass helicopter (think MASH). Any daydreaming, I got to wondering what they eat… so Google Is My Best Friend… I looked it up.  It was interesting - to me anyway.  So for your educational gratification and/or annoyance, I give you the eating habits of the dragonfly:

(We watch dragonflies flying around the pond and they are beautiful. But what DO dragonflies eat? A dragonfly is an agile predator. Adult dragonflies and dragonfly nymphs (the stage of the dragonfly that lives in the water) are excellent hunters and mainly eat other insects. Have you ever heard of a dragonfly going on a diet? No? We haven’t either, because these little critters are carnivorous in their minds, bodies and soul. A fun fact here - A dragonfly can eat food equal to its own weight in about 30 minutes; which roughly translates into you trying to eat as much as 100 lbs…let alone in half an hour.  We don’t eat that amount of food in a week! From the time they get out of their eggs as little nymphs, their limbs and mouth yearn for meat and seek out prey underwater. They are extremely fast swimmers and will eat just about anything that moves under the water surface and on. They have a hyper-thrust mechanism to give them the extra speed-boost when they are pursuing a critter that gives the dragonfly nymph a run for its money. For a quick burst of speed, they eject water from their anal opening to act like a jet propulsion system, which makes it a near impossible feat for the nymph dragonfly’s prey to even think of an escape. If you think this is spectacular, wait till you hear this. Occasionally, the nymph will venture out of the water to get a quick snack from the land. It does this with such nonchalance that when seen this way, one would never really consider the dragonfly nymph to be primarily aquatic, and never ‘ever’ an aquatic insect with gills. As Nymphs, the dragonflies eat mosquito larvae, other aquatic insects and worms, and for a little variety even small aquatic vertebrates like tadpoles and small fish. Once they are ready to leave their aquatic homes, they crawl above the water surface, molt to shed their skin one last time before they take to the skies as elegant dragonflies. Do they change what they eat once they’re airborne? Hardly! Adult Dragonflies are born rulers of their domain and they prove it to just about every insect that thinks it can pull a fast one on this killing machine. The adult dragonfly uses the basket formed by its legs to catch insects while flying. The adult dragonfly likes to eat gnats, mayflies, flies, mosquitoes and other small flying insects. They sometimes eat butterflies, moths and bees too. From bees to mosquitoes, dragonflies make a meal out of what they please and can hunt down insects on a whim, callously plucking them out of thin air after out-flying outmaneuvering and them in the chase that does not normally last very long. To give you a little insight, the dragonfly that is many times the size of a mosquito or a housefly needs to flap its wings a mere 30 times a minute when compared to a mosquito’s 600 times a minute and the housefly’s 1000 flaps a minute requirement to keep them flying and in peak maneuverability. Such is the power that the dragonfly is equipped with and given its low-energy speed capability, very, very few insects can escape its basket shaped grabbing limbs that it uses to clutch on to its prey before crushing the critter into a gooey mass, with its powerful mandibles and swallowing it. Adult dragonflies eat just about anything that is edible and can be caught. They are a treasure for humanity because they keep mosquito populations under strict control by feasting on them when they are in abundance. Similarly, they also feed on ants, termites, butterflies, gnats, bees and other insects and tend to hunt in groups when large colonies of ants or termites are spotted. They are considered a pest by apiaries because they can polish off a good chunk of the bee population before one can realize the threat looming large. Writing about what dragonflies eat makes one wonder what would be the case if some of the older dragonfly species that have been found as fossils existed today. These fossil species belonging to the Meganeura genus were carnivorous insects with wings spreading to spans in the range of two and a half feet and made their food out of other insects and even small amphibians. If they were still alive today, we’d have to constantly watch our small pets to be sure they didn’t end up a dragonfly’s lunch!)

Boy, I bet you wish you could blow water out of your ass and swim faster.  I know I do.  Farts don’t work quit as well.

Blogger Fun In Roswell GA

I had the awesome chance to meet up with some great ex-Navy guys and one former RAF pilot today in Roswell, GA.  Broepatch called us the Secret Squirrels. (I don’t know why – I’m new to the group.)

We met at Mac McGee's Irish Pub in Roswell, GA.

In the rear: Charles, Broepatch, OldNFO and An Englishman in Dixie.  All great bloggers and way above my caliber.   They like to shoot, too.  Guns and ammo was a great topic (though I was lost most of the time.)

In front: Me - Studley Hungwell.

Good food, good ale, good conversation, many laughs, but just not long enough.

We are going to try it again in about 90 days… hopefully OldNFO will be stateside long enough to attend.

Thanks for the good time, guys.