3 Insects In 3 Days

All shot in and around the very busy plaza above the neighborhood subway station.

A pretty moth

A grasshopper;  I was afraid it might get stepped on, but after my third attempt to capture it, it flew off

And a mantis with a bum leg -- and it's missing part of its right antenna!

Accidental Juxtaposition IV

In some cultures moths traditionally have been associated with death.  Perhaps because of their often ominously dark coloring and nocturnal ways, so different from their delightful diurnal counterparts the butterflies, or perhaps because of their fatal attraction to flames.  In any case, I know I found them repellent in an almost instinctive way when I was a child.  So, not so surprisingly, I found this moth resting by a clock to be a worthy focus of rumination on mortality.

Related post:  Vanitas

There Was A Beautiful Moth

sitting on the men's room mirror in the building the local McDonald's shares with other shops.  It was so large and pretty that at first I actually took it for a paper cutout rather than a real insect.  The place was empty at the time I spotted it, so I took out my phone and got ready to photograph it.  Just as I was ready to shoot a couple of guys walked in, and even though I was careful to make a show of pointing away from their direction, they still kept glancing back at me suspiciously.  I guess I can't blame them.

Not A Moth

I wasn't too sure whether this was a butterfly or a moth.  I rather suspected the latter, owing to the rounded shape of the wings and fairly stubby-looking body (it has ever been my -- probably groundless -- prejudice that butterflies have pointier wings and sleek, slender bodies).  But a quick online search disclosed the fact that moths have feathery antennae whereas butterflies have smooth ones, which this specimen has.  So butterfly it is.

Cicada And Moth

Sounds like an Aesop fable, doesn't it😊  Actually, there's some work going on in the building, so the staff have put up hard plastic sheeting in the elevator to protect the walls from all the equipment and material being ferried.  Then I noticed this cicada

under the plastic.  I wanted to free it, dead or alive, but to my surprise I could not find any openings or gaps anywhere through which it could have entered.  How the cicada managed to get itself trapped in there is a small mystery.  Days later, it's still there.  Then, yesterday I got on the elevator and on the side opposite the cicada there was this very pretty moth

just sitting there, pretty as you please, and not under the plastic.  It was clearly a live moth, perhaps taking refuge from the birds that populate the trees downstairs (but it probably just wandered in at random).  I left it alone and exited the elevator in the lobby, but then I ducked right back in -- to shoo the moth off its perch and out of the elevator.  It couldn't stay in the elevator, obviously -- what happened to the cicada might happen to it, too, or some thoughtless person might kill it.  Anyway, so there.

Moth In The Parking Lot