Glyphs and moths

I think I mentioned that  Barry and I ran away for a few days recently. We went to the beach; but there were lots of national parks around as well, and we went for a walk one morning.

We came across so many fabulous scribbly bark trees.  I don't know if anything like this lives anywhere else in the world; but here in Australia we have clever little moths, whose larvae live in this particular type of eucalyptus haemastoma (gum) tree and make these fabulous marks and glyphs and tracks in the bark.

These zigzag tracks are tunnels made by the larvae of the Scribbly Gum Moth (Ogmograptis scribula) and follow the insect's life cycle. Eggs are laid between layers of old and new bark. The larvae burrow into the new bark and, as the old bark falls away, the trails are revealed. The diameters of the tunnels increase as the larvae grow, and the ends of the tracks are where the larvae stopped to pupate. Thank you wikipedia.

I must admit I get amused by what appear to be completely random journeys; and where things go awry and they have to turn back and go around another way...but the marks they make are beyond beautiful.

And then the calligrapher in me was absorbed by how people also chose to graffiti these trees themselves. As if the handwriting of the larvae was an invitation for humans to try their hand as well?!?  Anyhow, despite my preference for them not to destroy or wreck the trees, I found myself a little bit fascinated by how the carved letters appeared almost like scars and I imagined their scabs falling off as the bark shed and leaving only  hint of the original writing.

Sometimes nature just gets it so right.