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Greetings to all poets on this Monday. The weeks are speeding by with the year already half gone. Sometimes it seems impossible to find time to catch one's breath and relax. I hope that our Open Link provides some opportunity to pause for reflection, to enjoy the creative writing of others, very like ourselves, who steal a few moments from a busy schedule to express themselves in poetry. In our common environment we are here to share, support and learn and call it time well spent.
Hi Toads, Kay here, with a bit of fun for you.
This challenge was originally to have been all about this great huge and very big spider that jumped onto the head of my friend Jenn's cat, Daisy, and the interesting, if somewhat gruesome, things said spider has been said to do.
Daisy wonders where it went. Photo by Jenn Jilks
The young cat had been eyeing the spider, which made it nervous, so it jumped up onto Daisy's head and hid behind her ear where she couldn't see it.
Critters who do things like that make me very nervous. Behind her ear. Ugh.
This one is Dolomedes Triton, a six-spotted fishing spider. The myth, Jenn says, is that they eat fish.
The truth is, they eat water striders and other water bugs (or anything else they want to eat, apparently not including cats).
Another myth, and this is why I thought it would make a good Toads challenge, is that the females often eat the males during courtship.
It seems the truth, however, according to a Wikipedia article about Triton's cousin, Dolomedes Fimbriatus, is that females who have already bred will eat males who attempt to breed with them thereafter. D. Fimbriatus is heftier than her cousin, and singularly unattractive, in my opinion. I can't see why anyone would want to get near her, never mind mate with her.
The most interesting thing (again, in my opinion) about the Dolomedes girls is that they carry their eggs around in silk bags in their jaws, until they have hatched, as the ones in the photo below, have done, then leave them to find their way out of the bag and into the world unaided.
Wikipedia photo, Dolomedes Fimbriatus
Photo by Jenn Jilks
Cute, huh? But, in case you don't want to write poetry about spiders (and heaven knows I'd rather not) I'm including an assortment of Jenn's wildlife photos. They live near Perth, Ontario, where the nearby swampy land is a mecca for wildlife. But first, she and her husband live with four cats who seldom gather to eat all at once, so the photo above is considered most unusual, according to Jenn.
Daisy and her sister Dorah love to accompany Jenn on walks, even where the ground is wet. Photo by Jenn Jilks
Canada Goose with gosling. Photo by Jenn Jilks
Tree frog. Photo by Jenn Jilks
I don't want to come out to play. Photo by Jenn Jilks
The baby phoebes in this nest are just beginning to open their eyes. Photo by Jenn Jilks
And, for me, a darlin' duckling. Photo by Jenn Jilks
The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so
please do not link up old work which kind of fits an image. This is in
the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be
newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated
links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.
