De insectorum

De insectorum other single sketched microstories

...de insectorum

De insectorum

and other single sketched microstories

Translation: G. Frantzeskakis

Illustrations: Stilos

Cricket ballads also have an expiry date - or so it seems… (for lack of a better introduction)

I know, I know. Upon these, six-legged creatures¹ our nutritional² future lies. Twenty-nine years from now (say, in 2050 A.D.), televised chef holograms will be recommending all sorts of gourmet recipes with edible insects, like: “Green salad with corn and cherry tomatoes, sprinkled with ladybugs and golden flies”. Or “Free roaming cricket burger with a touch of balsamic sauce”.

In contradiction to this bleak (for most insects, anyway) future I brought myself to author this booklet, while, at the same time, claim the honour to perhaps be considered (at least by some, in the future) the troubadour, the bard of these little six-legged critters…

September 22, 2021, 11:39 AM, in Kastella (Piraeus). Nikos D. Platis

Picture this. We were the sole survivors on Earth, this Nile mosquito and I! And it would relentlessly pester me with it’s buzzing, passionately sucking my blood, turning me into a human pincushion without remorse or pity. But what was my poor soul to do? How could I ever slay the last mosquito on the planet?

Ants today are living in the corresponding to the Homo Sapiens huntergatherer, pre - agricultural era. And they have absolutely no desire of transitioning to the, so called, agrarian revolution, thus becoming cottiers for Bayern - Monsanto.

Lately, in the sun scorched and unpaved flowerbeds on Prophet Elijah’s hill, myriads of wild ladybugs have appeared. Those little, elongated insects, with the black and orange Indian design patterns on their backs. All day long, up until the deep sunset, they will roam about all possible directions. Coming from somewhere, going somewhere. They, too, have a job to do, you know?

Where I come from, we call it Kolochtipis or Giakoumis (ass - tapper or Jacob). It’s an all black (though sometimes, hazelnut brown) oblong beetle, hanging around the old houses on the hill of Munichies (Prophet Elijah) in Piraeus.

It will appear out of nowhere and move in a dash. Just like an Ethiopian runner.

This bug was something of an innocent, impromptu toy for the children of yesteryear that live today as pensioners - if they haven’t already departed from this world into Heaven.

This entomic entertainment consisted of a light press on Giakoumis’ head to the ground, so that it began to rhythmically tap the rear part of it’s body, generating a jazzy, dry, metallic sound. The signature sound of Kolochtipis.

But what was really impressive about this tiny beetle was it’s post - test behaviour. For, as soon as it was released from the jailer’s 2ngertip, it would go about it’s business as if nothing had happened; no drama no fuss.

A true circus performer, having just 2nished with another show, heading for home.

The incredible Giakoumis or Kolochtipis.

Ηer eyes are purple (or perhaps black) and somewhat lustful. Her colour is fitting to her natural habitat; green or brown. A creature of summer. Her life expectancy does not exceed sixty five to seventy days. Bearing two restless antennas, she is able to make sense of her surroundings. Pentatomoidea is this insect’s scientific name, but to my language it’s a “she”. And her colloquial is stinky. She is anything but a smelly creature, dirty and foul. By no means! In fact, she is a spotless herbivore; loves tomatoes, green beans and all fresh veggies, as well as tree bark. So, why is it that they named her “stinky”? It’s because, as soon as she senses danger, whenever she gets scared, her chest glands, right between her first and second pair of legs, secrete an extremely unpleasant smell (the same way we would release adrenaline). But, let me give you an

example, for size. It’s as if, a Behemoth, would lock you up, in the palms of their hands, causing you to, literally, soil yourself, subsequently proceeding to properly stigmatize you with the abominable label “shit pants”! I’ve come across many stinkies on the beach of Selianitika.

I even tried to fraternize with one of them, as soon as she came in… literally handy, when she actually dropped on my wrist while attempting to traverse a tree trunk. After weighing the new-found data with her antennae, she decided to simply crawl up my hand and just… chill, as if my wrist was nothing less of a leisure layout. She sat there for six to seven minutes. She didn’t smell bad at all (hopefully I didn’t either).

Why?

Because she was not afraid. That’s (almost) all!

Over at the Chilean desert of Atacama (desierto de Atacama), legend has it that it rains every hundred to a hundred and fifty years. No doubt about it; it’s the driest hot desert in the world, albeit neighbours with the Amazon (a true orgy of forest and water)! No wonder, then, that in the Atacama desert - all 181,300 square kilometres of it - you couldn’t come across half of an umbrella. Paradoxically though, this is the only desert where a mosquito-like insect can be found. And they call it “Culicida Hydrocharis”* Could it be the case of a humorous nickname given by some effervescent godfather of an entomologist? Or rather of

an insect with pressing and yet incorrigible masochistic inclinations? I asked around, I honestly did. Nobody seemed to know the right answer…

*”Hydrocharis” means “the one who enjoys water too much” in ancient Greek.

An unidentified little insect landed on the hanger of my backpack. It’s an insect of the sea shore and I met quite a few others like it, the days before.

Spindle-shaped, its length hardly exceeding four to five millimetres. Its wings are subtle golden green. Its head, a washed, dull orange.

I slowly extend my right hand index toward it. It gets a little upset, nervously flapping its fusiform wings, revealing the deep golden black of its back.

Eventually it stays put. I continue with my approach, index outstretched. It momentarily backs off and then hops on it, without demur, just like a grey African parrot would, on its perch.

Turning its head in my direction, it looks like it’s staring at me, through those black, “painted” dots where its eyes would be, perchance wondering who I am and where I’m headed.

But then again, perhaps not…

The word insection (scission, carving) traces its origin to the very old times, way back when the Acropolis (which is to say, the Parthenon) was still a plot. The adjective insectional appears in the stories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, (today: Bodrum), (484-426 BC). In fact, the word insect is the substantivized neuter gender of the aforementioned adjective. Aristotle himself (384 - 323 BC) was the one who named the insects by attributing the following etymological definition: «Καλώ

It is quite obvious, I’d say, that the Stagirean philosopher here, is way off his head; and that’s because the term “insects” makes no specific reference to the larvae 5, the pupae and the caterpillars, since these creatures do not meet the

standards laid-down by Aristotle, having no… insective insections. It’s as if we would consider babies to not being human, for some obscure morphological reason.

Yes indeed. The multilateral genius of Aristotle really messed things up, here, but don’t tell him that!

He is too sensitive on all matters of science…

4. I call insects all those bearing insections (incisions) in their body (“On the Parts of Animals”, 487a).

5. The cicada spends most of its existence as a worm. Only just before it dies, does it become the flying, crepitating insect we are all familiar with.

Κyparissi, Laconia. Pre tablet era. Summer of 1987 (perhaps even 1988). Early in the night. Tenish. We’re strolling down to the lower parts of the village. Rural darkness all around. No illumination, bar the starlight and the faded glow of a waning moon. Immersed in the strange comfort of unfamiliar sounds: the crickets, incessantly flirting with their little violins, the stream flowing along the dirt road that connects High and Low Kyparissi, the hoarse ribbits of the frogs, the morse tweets of nocturnal birds and the human overtones of the nearest houses.

First, we’re overcome by a breathtaking smell, a sweet and gentle scent, similar to the one of flowers in the sunset 7. Trying to locate the source of this fragrance, we find that it comes from a dashed line of light on the ground, lazily

advancing in the opposite direction from us. By focusing meticulously and up close we finally see them, clear as day: some twenty caterpillar firebugs, one behind the other, hurrying… somewhere. We eventually say our farewells and they fade into the night. Naturally, the sweet aroma dissipates with them…

There I am, on the veranda, discarding the dried twigs of a spider plant that had taken root, for good, many years ago, in a clay pot of about forty centimetres in diameter, when, in the gradually revealing landscape, I see a small wasp hive (about twenty-five to thirty cells in all). It was guarded by five or six wasps who, when the pruner holding hand came near them, nervously left a characteristic threatening buzz and immediately assumed battle positions. I pull my hand back and let myself observe them for about ten minutes. They do not move. All they do is watch me too. Their battle was never given. We decided to live together in good faith. So far we are doing well (two month anniversary on September fifth).

In lack of a flashlight

I am using fireflies. Their glow is Absolutely ambient And definitely (By far) more frugal.

In the year 2017, September first, at about nine-thirty in the morning, in one of those rooms-to-let by there she was, bathed in light and in complete humility; the wasp queen! She buzzed around, making circles around a half eaten chocolate cake that came with my coffee, snatched a thick brown crumb and vanished, as if by magic, the same way she appeared…

Since no one took the trouble to warn me of where our afternoon stroll might lead to, I ended up mountaineering on yellow flip flops!

But the scenery was so enchanting, amidst the virgin forest of northeastern Evia, that it never even crossed my mind to turn back; to return, so to speak, to my accommodation in Vasilika, dow to Psaropouli, and just go about reading my newspaper, carefree and complacent.

It was already getting dark when we came across that small, frothy waterfall. Water flowing rapidly over three giant stepping rocks, from a height no more than twelve to thirteen meters.

The lower rock was hollowed but the water and a four meters long by one and a half meter wide (and about three meters deep) small pond was formed.

Without a second thought, I decided to jump in.

Sweaty and sticky, already suffering from the summer heat, I really didn’t have to think twice. So, I said au revoir to my friends, as was required, and prepared myself for the most unforgettable dive.

The water was so cold, it literally knocked the wind out of me. I thought I was going to have a heart attack and was beginning to regret the nonsense I pulled, but not for long.

Soon enough, a different set of feelings and emotions would engulfe me. The idea that I was swimming in the actual fountain of youth completely overwhelmed me! I know, perhaps I am a bit bipolar or ever a fool but that’s just me, and my frequent mood swings.

So, there I was, swimming, desolate and blissful, surrendered to the magic of the waters turning pink under the palette of dusk.

What sublimity of moments and sensations!

Suddenly, an imperceptible hissing sound, an indiscernible movement on the far side of the lake put me on alert. There it was, a small butterfly, momentarily stirring it’s wings. But wait! Not just one. Two. Three. Countless!

Woe! Woe, heaven and hell!

I was not as alone as I thought. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of butterflies, the same colour with the rock, had covered an area of about two square meters, one next to the other, presumably about to call it a night.

I know I am supposed to act my age, and I usually abide to it, but, part of me is still hosting a child inside and now, my playful and teasing mood had just found fertile ground. So, what I did, is I tried to scare the one closest to me. But the butterfly would not budge! It simply hopped a little bit higher, just as far as needed so I couldn’t reach it. By a millimetre!

The idea that I was about to witness a dense cloud of butterflies take flight over my head excited me immensely. But as soon as my finger came close to one of them, the insect would simply move, ever so slightly, hurrying to the space provided to it by the other butterflies. Sprinkling them with water did not seem to bother them, either. Every single attempt ended up in them moving all together, just a little bit higher on the rock, so as to get out of range.

It was as if they were one single organism. One, multi-bodied, intelligent entity…

So I came to terms with it. Giving up all effort I stood there, gleefully gazing at them, until night fell upon all of us.

It was the moonlight, in fact, that made me realize, their whole appearance was not just a simple rock imitating camouflage. Their wings and bodies were covered with bizarre, dotted patterns. Moreover, the entire swarm had changed direction and now, all of them had turned their heads towards me, as if they were meticulously observing me…

I was packing my stuff for another two days of business and pleasure in Livadia.

From the stack of t-shirts in my closet, I picked out this cobalt blue middy I’d bought at the beginning of the Sumer and as I did, a beautiful silver six-legged creature cascaded on it, at the dizzying speed of a slalom skier. It was a silverfish (“Lepisma saccharinum”, it’s entomological term), giving what we humans would call “a life-anddeath struggle”.

Alas! In spite of all the skilful slaloms it executed, there was no escaping the inevitable. Poor fellow ended up a tray silver stain on my cobalt t-shirt.

Underneath my workspace window, inside a plaster crack, at the point where the outside wall adjoins the sidewalk slabs, there existed, until recent years, a thriving anthill.

From sunrise to sunset, tiny brown ants would be maniacally coming and going as if they were on Speed. Only during the winter would this endless teeter-totter slow down. You’d have to focus closely to spot an ant or two near the colony’s entrance, maybe another one a few steps away and another coming down the wall.

I have no idea what the rest of the ants were committed in, midwinter; I am confident though, that they were not vacationing in Switzerland but were in a state of high alert rather than indulgence and idleness - like civil servants for the Ministry of Culture would be.

For the sake of truth, I am invoking that winter

night when Piraeus was inundated by a flash flood the likes of which had not been recorded in the weather forecast chronicles for the last fifty years.

It was the same night when a couple of old twostorey houses in Kastella collapsed. One at the junction of King Paul’s avenue and Schisti Odos, and another (just one hour later) a few blocks up the road, on Nestor’s street.

In the next morning, the careful eye would be able to observe all the soaked goods from the anthill’s warehouse laid out to dry under the sun.

And the day after that, even the most inattentive eye would find that the entrance of the anthill had been raised by at least four centimetres, like the Tower of Babel.

A conical shaped hill made of grey sand, had peen put together in no time.

I don’t know where from exactly they dug out all those grains of sand but it was quite clear that they knew what they were doing, why they were doing it and how.

Both wonderful and admirable it was, not just the way they managed to cement all those hundreds of thousands of grains together, but the impeccable nature of their architectural design, the exemplary distribution of labour and the fulfilment of the subcontracting agreement; not to mention the aesthetics of that functionally

immaculate ingress to this mini biblical dome.

It resembled the crater atop a volcano, opening up and shutting down on demand; instead of a door a tiny stone that sealed the aperture when entryway was prohibited.

Then, spring came and the floodplain just disappeared as fast as it came about. It was obviously inconvenient for the proper handling of cargo, plus it caused an unneeded roundabout.

And after that, time flew like it always does, and the anthill dissolved from my visual field, until, one day, it actually disappeared from the face of the earth.

I never determined what happened to my Lilliput neighbours.

So ephemeral; the lives of flies. Minuscule, like flies themselves. And when they expire, they transition into little souls

With fly wings.

In the first twenty-four hours they buzz around their remains, conforming to the relevant, burial customs.

And then, they take the long way to Heaven, Toward the realm of Angels, A fragile miniature of whom they constitute.

They would show up, every year, on some days of Spring.

Around Easter time.

Kind of like the supposedly miraculous “grass snakes of the Madonna”, Inside that church, in Lefkada.

Guided by their curly antennae, in flowing motion on their hundreds of fidgety feet, they’d climb, with infinite ease, on the front house wall, where my grandma Helen used to stay on summers and holidays.

It wasn’t just a couple of them, either! There were dozens, even hundreds of them. The entire wall would be painted with millipedes. Ceaselessly coming and going, Until one day; they’d disappear. As if swallowed up by the earth. The millipedes!

The millipedes of Selinia, in Salamina island! The very same ones you won’t find, not even as a single specimen, within the fauna in the land of the battle of Salamis, any more… …

The butterflies of Astypalaia. Medium in size, XXXL in grace and elegance. Yellowish and blissful. They can soar against the yearly winds of the Aegean seas, Up, down, sideways, every-ways. They travel, (like any other butterfly), enormous lengths in no time. (Size-wise and in aviation analogy, as if we flew from Athens to Chania in seven minutes). Compared to them, all modern planes and helicopters seem like primitive and cheap knock offs.

Oh, how splendidly they flutter, the yellow butterflies of Astypalaia,(but also every other butterfly!)

What do they run on? Flower pollen, naturally!

We’ve all seen them; perhaps some more than others.

Running at their frantic pace, carrying in their mandibles, spores, dead flies, cockroach limbs, dry bread crumbs and all sorts of relishes; constantly provisioning the warehouses and the cellars of their anthills, in anticipation of the harsh winters, before it starts snowing for good.

Be that as it may, none of us has ever witnessed them at mealtime, when, for instance, they’re having dinner.

I wonder. Do they all dine together, in a common refectory, like monks in a monastery?

Τhe spider!

Almost everybody takes it for an insect. ‘Tis but a in effect, related to the scorpion. Walks around on eight legs; body divided in two parts: the cephalothorax and the abdomen (opisthosoma). Not really an insect; but a close relative indeed. In its web (laced by a silk thread created out if its own body) redemption is accomplished by all those insects whose unfathomable, incurable passion remains unanswered.

Those who’ve given up the will to live. It only takes one bite, and they are dazed for good, bequested thus with long desired euthanasia. Afterwards, and just in case quandaries with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ecclesiastical authorities arise, they are consumed on site, all presumption of guilt digested.

And gone… The spider!

I wonder, do ladybugs or praying mantises (come to think of it, all other insects, as well) dream, when they’re asleep at night? Do they ever wake up in horror, tormented by savage, relentless nightmares?

Could it be that, their worst incubus is a Kafkaesque metamorphosis where, Gregor Samsa¹ was nothing less than a beautiful, all-black beetle, misfortunate enough to wake up a man; an insignificant salesman by profession, deep in debt with crappy relatives and a dead end future?

Is it that, every time they part, they wish each other to “sleep tight and not let the bed bugs bite”? In short, do they live oneiric lives or not? Might somebody enlighten us on that?

An ordinary fly has landed on the plate of the “Ageri” restaurant, on the second tine of my horizontally positioned fork, tasting with its proboscis the leftovers of my Symian shrimp. It really is excited!

It looks like it approves my culinary predilections. This little Astypalean fly, at an August noon, in the year of our Lord 2017.

I smile at her!

She smiles back (at least that’s what it looks like to me).

Someone who obviously confused flies with beetles named her “golden fly”; although she’s neither gold nor a fly. She’s but a typical, goldengreen coloured beetle.

Full name: “Centonia Aurata”, in terms of entomological taxonomy. She flies in circles with a distinct buzzing sound. A summer bug; a creature of heat. Close to extinction, I believe. She’d visit us regularly, every summer, on our rooftop, in our house, corner of Karaiskou and Sotiros, whenever my grandma made tomato puree inside that earthenware tray.

Never alone. Always in company. Watching (but also hearing) all those, sparkling under the sunbeams, golden flies, rushing in from all directions of Piraeus, for a taste of my grandma’s puree, was like a sweet dream.

A proper, golden-green dream! And I consider myself blessed to have witnessed it.

Τhese six tiny insects (whose video of 11,937,020 views quickly became viral) seem to have caused havoc inside the scientific community, NASA and all entomologists in general, to the point of incurable insomnia.

They were captured in Huston, Texas, and the reason of the aforementioned devastation has to do with their general subsistence, the point of their existence within the natural habitat. They are black in appearance, with wiggling antennae and restless little feet.

Always advancing together, in groups of six at a minimum, one after the other. They occasionally fashion sets of circus-like formations.

Viewed from above, their bodies resemble a compact Asian rice hat, from the era of the Han dynasty.

Whispered rumour has it that they are nothing but nanobots, but we should probably keep this between us. It’ll be our little secret.

There we were, all four of us, taking the long way home, walking the dirt road, bursting with heat. Who, exactly, were we? Myself (or at least, half of myself, as I was only thirty-five at the time), my wife, Helen, our daughter Daphne (six, maybe seven years old) and our boy Peter, just a toddler by then.

To our right and left, dead and dried plants of various species and dimensions, of the so-called garrigue vegetation. In short, the typical drylands of the Cyclades Archipelago in August.

I was dragging my feet on the hot red soil when I saw it. Casually walking past it, something inside of me tingled; something was very wrong with the shadow cast by one of those dried weeds on the side of the road. Yep, something sinful was indeed unfolding under the false meridian calm. I focused my gaze on the suspicious plant.

Despite their perfect colour matching, there were two separate things, even though they look like a single dry cob. On top of the real plant, in a very deceptive fashion (so that it looked like a part of it) an arachnid, with a relatively small oval body and eight huge, very long and slender legs, was clenched. No cobweb, no nothing. Just the bug. Its colour was the exact hue of dried straw, like the plant that hosted it. What on earth was it doing there? What was it waiting for? I wandered… But before I could think twice, a fleshy green fly landed next to it. Within fractions of a second, the little spider jumped and with a single bite

decapitated the fly. What followed was a feast of Gargantuan proportions; and when the spider was full, it returned to its post, once more becoming part of the dried plant. That was the first but not the last time I ever witnessed (in real time) an active spider predator executing an ambush.

That “invisible, web-less spider” was not the only creature of its species living in the island of Kea, as you probably gathered. The nearby dried-up plants were swarming with close relatives. And when the rain season came and the plants turned green, so did they, like proper arachnid chameleons. I do not know if they ever came to Darwin’s attention, if he recorded them in his diaries. Nor can I tell whether they are still making their honest living in the ecosystem of Kea.

Τhe Lepisma Saccharina insect (commonly known as silverfish or bookworm) feeds, as it is well known, with books in our bookcases (their spines, mostly).

In contrast, its close relative, the insect Lepisma Verbum, prefers the printed words themselves (rather than the pages of the books that host them). To be precise, it feeds on the ink of those words that refer to proper names, dates and epic feats. It devours, with remarkable bulimia, printed words bearing a confessional character, referring to historical or (pseudo-historical) events or simply contributing to any sort of fiction.

Because of this, my once substantially extensive library now consists of books with almost blank pages (where, only a handful of articles, accents and punctuation marks, links, adjectives and prepositions sporadically appear).

Oh! I meant to tell you that when the insect Lepisma Verbum, is not busy devouring words off of books, you may hear it whistling a tune that oftentimes sounds like Beethoven›s Ninth and other times like the “Unchain My Heart” leitmotif, as delivered by Hugh (Laurie).

A yellow butterfly from Astypalea in the city of Piraeus! Amidst the hills of Munichia, northwest∙ in the dead zone of the upper part of that socalled playground, that fraud of a mayor had the audacity to document on his campaign leaflets!

What a surprise!

The yellow butterfly of Astypalea flutters happily, often scraping over my head. It seems that she followed us on the return ship.

Yes, now that I think about it, throughout the journey, but also up until we got home, I could sense the discreet shadow of her presence, Much like the image of a woman peeking at you in an erotic way…

Ι

think that wasps are gone for good from the summer resorts of Egialia.

Only now and then do you get to see a few of them.

Where has it gone, that hubbub on the tables of old cafes, with the half-spent orangeades in glass bottles and the dozens of wasps, buzzing around, fighting for their share?

According to a (totally unsubstantiated) folk tale, all the wasps of the Egialia area migrated, in swarms, to the island of Lemnos ∙ Where they succeeded in raining havoc upon all fruit In the garden of Mr. Antonakis the butcher (especially the cherries).

All the while, the (far superior in reflexes) Supreme Court lawyer,

Mr. Lefteris Bouliotis, managed to exterminate, in his office, Six vertsonia¹¹ in just twenty minutes. A single wasp, however, (one of the migratory ones)

Got to sting the iris of a Chinese surfer’s eyeball, Forcing him into the wrong maneuver That resulted in his immediate drowning (While surfing the waves in Kaspakas beach).

A colleague of the unfortunate man at the National Bank of Greece Would later declare, in tear-jerking fashion:

«We are utterly shocked. He was such a good guy, And an Olympiacos fan, be that as it may. It is an absolute tragedy!”

In Hunga, Tonga, Tugatapu, Nuku’alofa and the Cocos islands; in fact, in all of the islets settled somewhere between Antarctica and Australia, most every one of the flying insects have lost their wings, gave up on flying a long time ago, literally becoming wayfarers.

Hence flies and mosquitoes hike all day long, while moths crawl through the night, and, wingless as they are, maintain their larva state forever. And don’t get me started on the love bugs and the praying Mantises.

Wonder why? Because, as rumour has it, while they flew (when they could still fly) the wind would drag and drown them down into the sea; this is how rough they had it with the blasts.

And so, little by little, over time infinite, they’d show an ever growing reluctance to fly. And

Charles Darwin 1880

evolution would take over. And in the first one hundred thousand years their wings would shrink ever so slightly. Another hundred thousand, and they’d be half the size by now. Five hundred thousand years into it, and you could barely see them. Seriously, they looked like seeds until they didn’t even. All gone, with nothing but scars marking the spot.

Enter Charles - not the Prince of England - Darwin. Not only did he know all there is to know about “this wing loss habit of island insects”, as Rachel Lahey12 notes, but was also able to discern the exact reasons why those mites eventually turned into… wingless angels. The famous botanologist Josef Dalton Hooker however, would strongly disagree with Darwin’s hypothesis, so much so that they would eventually end up despising each other for good. And whenever their paths would cross, at the entomology club for instance, they’d just smirk and move on. Not a single word to be had.

Rumours are rife that Josef escalated this acerbic altercation when, on a gray and rainy afternoon of 1861, in the alleyway of the Wiener Staatsoper, he tried to trip his enemy up. But Charles levitated for a minute or two, managing to hold his balance, staving off his impending dive into the mud pool close-by, only to proceed with a fierce counterattack, lancing his former friend in the rib with his umbrella.

And judging by Mr. Hooker’s painful exclamation (echoing as far as five blocks and beyond, according to mostly unsubstantiated rumours), Mr. Darwin’s spearing must have rendered his umbrella utterly useless, having the wretched man carry on bareheaded under the deluge.

It is nonetheless the case that in Hunga, Tonga, Tugatapu, Nuku’alofa and the Cocos islands; in fact, in all of the islets settled somewhere between Antarctica and Australia, those walking - and indeed all other - insects wouldn’t give a damn about Charles’ and Joseph’s bickering. Ask them if they care…

Despite the many millennia that have passed, various unanswered key questions are still lingering, like a dense cloud of mosquitoes, about the pre-flood works and days of biblical Noah, when he gathered, in pairs, in his peculiar schooner, all the animals of our planet. Like, for example, exactly how did he manage to transport the extra frail Papillons d’amour¹³ inside his Ark?

On July 9, sometime between 1957 and 1959, a piercing buzz came from my grandmother Marigoula’s dining room; one that made her change her mood and smile, happily saying: “Bring back good news”. “Who are you talking to, grandma?” I asked her. “To hambaras14” (the news bearer), she answered in a singing tone. I followed the buzz and my gaze ended up on the latch of the kitchen door. The sound came from a grey butterfly that looked like a moth (but wasn’t). It was buzzing still, but in a more relaxed way. I tried to touch it but it sluggishly flew away, finally landing on the lamp cable. I went after it, again and again, but it kept changing positions. After a while I got bored and went out to play with the other kids, totally forgetting about it. In the evening, word came from the Port Authority that my uncle Tzanis, who had gone fishing in the wee small hours of last Sunday

morning and went missing for three days, when his boat was capsized by a severe storm off the coast of Kynosoura, had been found safe and sound (or so it sounded like to those who didn’t really know him).

In the apocryphal Greek text “Πράξεις Ιωάννου κατά Πρόχορον” (“Acts of John by Prochoros”) the journey of apostle John from Laodicea to Ephesus is documented. This is a fictional narrative with an unexpected albeit happy ending. In the course of this journey, John and his companions find themselves spending a night in a room of an abandoned hostelry. Those about him think it virtuous to grant John the sole birth and sleep on the ground. But it is all in vain. John will not fall asleep as hundreds of critters annoyingly run through his body. Until they hear him speak the following, erect and profoundly vexed: “I command thee, oh vile birth bugs, to heed and stay still, or else all kinds of shit is gonna happen to ya!”, upon which, his companions giggled shamelessly.

Even so, in a short while John would be sleeping like a baby. And the next day, they would find all of the bed bugs, obediently lined up outside the door, marking time with their tiny feet.

Oh, come on now! Did you actually buy that?

It was kind of fate! (by way of epilogue).

This book was authored almost spontaneously, in a heartbeat, without a second thought. Going about it was a wildly metaphysical experience for me (although I never got along with the odds and ends of the supernatural world), sort of like a chain reaction of fireworks bursting with inspiration and a series of small, saintly miracles.

Most of the short stories were written in July 2017, while on vacation, on the island of Astypalaia. I penned one of them, almost every single morning. The rest were jotted down somewhere between Piraeus, Chania, Aigion and Thessaloniki (one was actually scribbled en route, on the train).

This booklet proved to be a delighted happenstance. Everything went as desired - although sometimes sinfully so.

A devilishly divine circumstance of sorts.

Does that sound α bit verbose?

Well, why not?

Νotes: 1. Only arthropods with six appendages (not one more or less) are considered insects. Therefore, it would be a mistake to call centipedes, spiders or mites, “insects”.

2. In contrast to farm animals (lambs, calves, chickens, piglets) that require vast stretches of land for stalls and grazing (as well as special drainage facilities), insects take up little space, eat and defecate at infinitesimal quantities. On top of that, they will cost much, much less; they will most definitely be sold at… bargain prices.

3. “Pyrrhocoris Apterus” is their Latin name. Commonly called the “soldier bugs”. They live in groups where there is vegetation and they are omnivores; they feed on plants but also on various… delicious insects. In Kozani they are called “ladybugs of the devil”, as I am informed by my omnipresent friend, Marina.

4. I call insects all those bearing insections (incisions) in their body (“On the Parts of Animals”, 487a).

5. The cicada spends most of its existence as a worm. Only just before it dies, does it become the flying, crepitating insect we are all familiar with.

6. Male crickets «fiddle» (stridulate) by rubbing part of one of their forewings along a row of about 50 to 250 teeth on the opposing forewing. Grinding frequency depends on the number of teeth grinding per second. Vibrations then fill the air with the characteristic «cricket song».

7. Night flower, also known as “the common evening primrose”: a dicotyledonous plant of the Onagraceae family. Indigenous. Its flowers look like cones and remain shut during the day (but they bloom at dusk).

8. Holiday settlement outside Aegion. The author spent a few summers, autumns and Easter celebrations in Akoli. It remains a dear place in his heart.

9. The protagonist in Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”.

10. Its popular name is Falangi and it belongs to the order of arachnids called Opiliones. It won’t weave a web, nor will it produce poison (despite popular belief). Its body does not consist of two but of one single part. This creature is a true badass. Never a dull moment! It falls in love, protects its children (either as a mother or a father) and conducts itself in a series of complex social behaviours: it will join forces with other members of the family to cooperatively face a common enemy by coordination of their complex nervous system.

11. This is what the inhabitants of Lemnos island call all wasps.

12. Rachel Leahy: PhD student at Monash University, in Australia.

13. Papillons d’ amour (love butterflies): this is what the French call the “Phtirus pubis” lice. Also - vulgarly - known as “crabs”.

14. Winged insect. When it flies, it makes a “buzzing» sound, which is why it›s commonly called a buzzard (although, to be fair, most insects buzz). In Santorini they used to call it (not sure if they still do) “hambara” or “kalomantatousi”, as it was believed to be a bearer of tittle-tattle and

Nikos Platis is renowned for the inventiveness and the originality of his subjects, the playfulness of his writings and his humour. According to Giorgos Frantzeskakis, his writing style resembles that of a scholarly inventor, since through his thematic dictionaries Platis “invented a new literary genre, just like before him someone invented the elegy, the sonnet and the Pulp Fiction. In other words, he has invented a new genre of written speech” (Kathimerini daily).

He has written about 30 books, some of which have become best sellers, such as Kama Sootra: A major guide to marginality (13,000 copies, 1983) or the The Spicy Dictionary: a nearly wise book… (5 editions, 9,000 copies, 2003), and the Ual Sex Dictionary (6,500 copies, 2007).

For the last 20 years he has been well-known mostly for his thematic dictionaries (a mix of encyclopedic information, history, current affairs and subversive humour): “The lexicographer (Nikos Platis), with the wealth of experience he has amassed through his research, has acquired a vibrant ethos, extraordinary courtesy and a sort of humanitarian superiority” (Kostis Papagiorgis, LIFO).

His book Good bye Mr. Pap: a panic fiction (1975) is considered by some university researchers to be a reference book for the post-Junta transition crime fiction.

Under the general title The little fish of lake Kaloumba he wrote and illustrated 5 booklets, 5 adventurous stories for pre-school children.

He lives in Piraeus, where he was born (1951). He works in the field of advertisement as a creative copywriter. He does not drive, he is a die-hard walker.

Publication info

The spider!

The spider! Almost everybody takes it for an insect. ‘Tis but in effect, related to the scorpion. Walks around on eight legs; body divided in two parts: the cephalothorax and the abdomen (opisthosoma).

Not really an insect; but a close relative indeed. In its web (laced by a silk thread created out if its own body) redemption is accomplished byall those insects whose unfathomable, incurable passion remains unanswered.

Those who’ve given up the will to live. It only takes one bite, and they are dazed for good, bequested thus with long desired euthanasia.

Afterwards, and just in case quandaries with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ecclesiastical authorities arise, they are consumed on site, all presumption of guilt digested.

And gone… The spider!”