Stick Bugs (Part 3)

For a long time in my life I thought art was what had a label with a title and a name’s author. Art was locked in museums and galleries. But I wasn’t educated and instructed enough, so later I added music, ballet, and architecture, everything that made me feel the same heat in my chest that I felt when I saw the Endless Column of Brancusi in Tirgu Jiu and I was about 10 years old. Quite indiscriminate and open concept, border line with religion maybe. I know you are wondering what is the link to stick bugs. Well, I think if you saw the stick or leaf insects molting, you’d think that the nature’s art creation. These bugs eat lots of eucalyptus leaves, lots (see the picture), until their bodies are too big for their “skin” or exoskeleton. So they reshuffle the entire organic matter, their whole bodies, and squeeze out of the old skin as new, bigger bugs. Sometimes they get wings when they re-emerge from molting, and other times they lose a limb or two, or they change colors from brown to green or green to brown. And they are vulnerable, like art, when they re-appear from the molt. Yes, molting is a creative act and these creatures, if you agree or not, are not “Yuck, bugs!”, but “WOW! Beautiful!”