By KAREN MADORIN
Somewhere I read a quote stating, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” I follow this philosophy and add you’ll meet interesting creatures on the road through life. Sometimes those creatures look like characters hanging out in intergalactic space bars in Star Wars.
Long ago, our big yellow dog and I took our morning walk. Such journeys started the day right and occasionally offered strange sights. I’ve mentioned a few in past columns. That trek beat the heck out of every sight I experienced on that two-mile sandy Trego County road.
We’d observed the usual that morning—a killdeer racing ahead, a sparrow hawk proclaiming territorial rights, cows trying to figure out why that yellow dog kept bouncing straight up and down as a mouse ran under his paws, and a ribbon of robin egg blue horizon line looping above lush pastures and ripening wheat.
Then we crossed the section line into what I consider “wilderness.” The only reason humans drive here is to go elsewhere. No one lives on this road.
Once, I spotted a bobcat leaping above big blue stem and brome grasses waving in Walk-in-Hunting. On damp mornings, I often spotted doe and fawn prints crossing from WIHA to Big Creek. Occasionally, I spied a snake’s tracks wriggling from one grassy ditch to the other before a redtail dove for dinner.
Surprises in the “wilderness” kept me walking that direction often. One particular morning offered an amazing “stop and stash this in the memory bank” moment.
Our dog analyzed the scent of everything that occurred since he last sniffed the area. I trailed after, admiring early morning pastels, cool air rippling across skin, gravel rolling underfoot, while repeatedly sweeping eyes close--then far. Suddenly I thought I’d ended up at the intergalactic space bar mentioned earlier. Two semi-gloss black bugs rolled a shooter-sized ball of brown stuff from the north side of the road to the south.
My first thought was “dung beetle,” though dung beetles I watched on the Discovery Channel grew considerably larger than these. Recalling I’d watched African dung beetles deal with elephant-sized poo hadn’t occurred yet.
I search for the nearest pile of …. It lay distant in terms of the size and stride of these two beetles. Could it be? Could they have marched short insect legs into that pasture, collected, and formed a rollable ball of cow dung several hundred feet to the south? Obviously, I had to study such diligence. One stood atop the ball like a lumberman rolling logs down river. The other rose on hind legs, using its uppers to lever the ball forward.
Once home, I searched the Internet. Sure enough, dung beetles live in Kansas. In fact, they live everywhere except the Antarctic. If we didn’t have them, we’d be up to our eyeballs in…. Several varieties of these necessary but unappreciated creatures exist, and I spied “rollers.”
Ancient Egyptians deified them. That may have carried things too far until you consider one source’s claim they keep “the land livable by reducing flies, foul odors, and the ruination of pastureland.” Another noted more efficient use of beetles “could save farmers $2 billion a year by restoring grazing
land.” One beetle-rich farmer stated, “Once the cattle have vacated the paddock, within 48 hours, there is no manure left.”
Maybe odiferous livestock operations need to add more dung beetles to keep up with the stuff causing offensive odors to waft through windows. These beetles are good guys with whom to share life’s journey. I hope I see some again.