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Wildlife in your Garden

Springtime brings an onslaught of vicious pocket-sized creatures to eastern Massachusetts. Beware!

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I was mowing the other day and scared up another tiny bunny, which I then chased into the bushes to ensure I wouldn't inadvertently run him down.

I thank Philip Larkin for the warning he issued in "The Mower," which immediately came to mind:

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
 
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So what you see here is the remains of an aphid, it's body attached to a podium created by a braconid wasp. This tiny parastic wasp finds a target host and deposits an egg inside it. This egg will be dormant until the host is big enough for the larva to hatch and then the wasp larva feeds on the insides of said host.

Eventually, the parasitic wasp will emerge and fly away and so nature goes on...

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Paul.
 

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