It was a beautiful June day (actually July 18) on monday, and I was sitting in my "office" (front seat of my little truck) attempting to catch up on paperwork. My office was temporarily located at Everett's Rotary Park, on the Snohomish River, and I was parked facing the nice patch of riparian woods there.

As I was sitting there with the window rolled down, and my left hand propped up on the steering wheel, I noticed a very small green bug crawling across the back of my hand. "Aphid" I thought, as I reached under the dash to grab my 10x hand lens , that miraculously I've managed to have for 35 years without losing.

Close scrutiny of this tiny thing (about 3 millimeters long) revealed a real beauty - a little long-legged bug that looked like it was carved out of brilliant translucent green jade. It also sported a bright red "racing stripe" down the length of it's body, bright red "knees" on it's hind legs, and long antennae that were striped with alternate bands of bright red and white. "Buddy" I thought, "if you were 50 times larger, you'd be famous. You'd be on the cover of National Geographic. You could be on a postage stamp from some tropical country. Except here we are in a truck in Everett".

The bug's temporary habitat was pretty strange close-up. It appeared to be a patch of dark bent -over bulrushes, sparsely growing out of a tan sandbar - the hairs on the back of my hand.

The bug turned out to be something other than an Aphid - probably a Plant Bug (family Miridae) nymph ,as it had unformed wings and lacked cornicles . Since I had paperwork I was supposed to be doing, I had to blow off my new buddy - literally. Hopefully the bug landed somewhere in the nearby Great Outdoors to find something to eat. Later a actual aphid landed on the same hand - with it's unique pear shaped body and funny cornicles sticking out of it's butt. It was even smaller than the other bug, and amusingly about the same seafoam green color as National Park Service vehicles I used to drive in a past life.

This little movie did have a nice soundtrack - a background score including Northern Flicker, Robin, Swainson's Thrush, Pewee, Yellow Warbler and Song Sparrow as the singers. This nice bit of riparian swamp is a good bird spot.

Jeff Gibson
in tiny Everett Wa