It’s easy being orange

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Yes, it’s an easy life when you’re an orange beetle and the Texas thistles are in bloom. That was the case on April 27 when I took this photograph in my northwest Austin neighborhood. Isn’t it curious that the surfaces of the beetle’s head and thorax look like the surface of a real orange?

If it’s easy being an orange beetle, it’s less easy being a flesh-colored and -covered photographer at this time of year, because along with many things to take pictures of come the microscopic mites called chiggers that leave itchy bites on people’s skins. That’s another price I pay for some of these photographs, but I won’t pass any of the extra cost along to you. But I will ask a second question, and one with as much metaphysical importance as the one in the first paragraph: why doesn’t our culture more often use the two colors in this photograph together?

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman