A JULY VISITOR DISCOVERS THE HAPPY DUNG BEETLE

This morning I awoke before everyone else in the house and decided to walk across the island through the forest to the beach.

In my early morning half sleep I had confused the snuffling sounds in the leaves outside my window before dawn for a very large armadillo. Dreaming, I thought the armadillo, which, like myself, is a fairly recent inhabitant on the island, had lost his way and was searching for a path across the yard to the pool of fresh water hidden in the tall grasses behind the house. I could tell by his frantic scuffling sounds he was a very thirsty armadillo. But when I was awake enough to open the white wooden shutters and peer into the departing dark, I realized this was not an awkward, lost armadillo, but a lanky feral bay mare pawing in the sand and leaves, looking for a bite of green under my window. Breakfast time on the island.

I drank licorice tea and grabbed a peach and headed out the back door across the sandy path. But as often happens on Cumberland, I did not get very far before something strange and beautiful caught my eye and completely thwarted my plans. About a hundred yards from the house I came upon what appeared to be a living pile of fresh horse manure. The dark green mound was literally heaving and looked as if it would pick itself up and move across the road into the forest.

The gray morning light lightened the path, and the closer I got the better I could see that this was not some strange blob of ectoplasm making its way across the road, but a normal pile of old-fashioned horse manure that was being transformed by that happiest of creatures, the dung beetle.

I knelt down and observed about twenty of the small black creatures hard at work sculpting tiny mini balls of manure out of the larger pile. Each beetle was utterly intent on its own project, oblivious to its neighbor performing the exact same task. Using its pincers and back legs, each beetle molded a perfectly round tiny ball of manure about the size of a large marble. This took about five minutes of uninterrupted effort. Then, the beetle would head off in the direction of the pine needle blanket on the forest floor, rolling its ball ahead of it like some tiny circus performer. Occasionally, the beetle would stop and lift his treasure high above his head and wave it around as if to say, ”Look, see what I can do! How perfect is this work of art!” The ball of manure was so perfectly rounded that each artisan could roll it several yards into the peace and quiet of the shade, out of harm’s way.

Once in a spot three to five feet away, and nestled safely down in the pine needles and dry leaves, the beetles would rest on their cool balls and eventually lay their eggs. Like mud daubers that lay their eggs in little compartments packed with dead insects, the new larvae would be born into the world with a meal immediately accessible.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but my walk to the beach was completely forgotten in this mysterious and beautiful adventure. Is this perhaps the same creature that the eighteenth-century British naturalist-artist Mark Catesby refers to as the Tumble Turd? If so, what a perfect name.