Coming home from my lovely day out, as I turned the corner onto my street, I caught out of the corner of my eye as it drifted across the ground in front of me, a beetle. A very blackish beetle. So black that had the light been better, he would have glistened like an oil patch in the rain that was softly spattering down. I stopped to watch him cross my path and head towards the grass.
Upon arriving at the edge of the paved sidewalk, he peered over the edge, then decided to tight rope walk along for a short while until he found a more suitable location at which juncture he eased himself off the sidewalk and onto the bare patch of dirt he had found in the grass.
He walked with some sense of purpose across the bare patch until the grass sprang up in front of him, at which point he made the rash decision to turn right. Struggling to get through the very thick tangle of grass, he paused, then backed up and wisely chose the path to the left. Still tangled with grass, this path, however, was much clearer.
As he walked through the grass, my eyes kept on his trail by watching the light shimmer off his abdomen when he was in the open, and the tremble of the stalks of grass when he pushed his way through the jungle.
First he found his way to the telephone pole. He walked along the base for a while, then attempted to climb. He was doing just fine, if you ask me (though I am no beetle expert), when he decided to turn 'round and put his little legs back onto solid ground. He backtracked to his starting point, then checked out the round plastic thingies at the base of the pole. I've no idea what they are, and I'm not sure but I think if you ask him, he would know.
After his jaunt with the telephone poles and it's accessories, he wandered again into the tangles of grass. At first glance it seemed as though he wasn't sure WHERE he was going, because he sort of zagged and zigged along. Then I realised, he DID have a destination in mind - he was just finding the easiest pathways through his forest. I think, but I'm not sure (again, I'm no beetle expert), that he was a security beetle, making his rounds.
I watched him, again following the trembles of the grass as he slashed them out of his way with his tiny beetle machete, and once in a while the shimmer of the streetlight on his body, until he finally disappeard from my sight into the darkness of the shadow of the telephone pole.
I continued my way home, pleased to have been allowed this glimpse of Alexander's (for I am sure that was his name) world.
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Alexander Beetle
I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day...
And Nanny let my beetle out
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out
She went and let my beetle out-
And beetle ran away.
She said she didn't mean it, and I never sauid she did,
She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.
She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid-
And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.
We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"
It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME,
And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."
And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.
-A.A. Milne
