What surprises me more than a new
millipede species was discovered this week
in Los Angeles County is that anyone cares
enough about millipedes to look for them. Entomologists
may be the last true heroes. They may be
a species unto themselves, one they have overlooked
in their zeal to turn from the mirror
toward the dirt. The Illacme socal
has four hundred eighty-six legs, a toothy head,
the L.A. Times says, and the greenish translucence
of a glow-in-the-dark toy. It weaves through the soil
as elegantly as an embroiderer’s needle. The reporter
must have labored over these phrases, felt enough
joy in prose to fuel her a few more days
in her reviled profession. A survey this year said half
of Americans think all journalists are liars. To them I offer
Corinne Purtill, who surely spent hours listening
to entomologists so she could tell us something approaching
the true nature of millipedes—not insects
but arthropods, more like lobsters than beetles,
vile-tasting to birds, garbagemen
of the forest, eaters of dead leaves they transform
into food for what grows—and of entomologists
themselves. How one named Paul Marek drove
on Christmas to Whiting Ranch to find specimens
which he gently scooped into plastic vials
with a bit of soil, then tucked into his carry-on
for the trip back to his lab. Attention
is the highest form of love. And I love entomologists
for the attention they pay to the smallest among us, and journalists
for the attention they pay to the ones who pay attention
to the spectrum of beauty and terror, our discoveries
and petty political battles and vicious crimes and acts
of unearned mercy and weddings and burials
in the somehow still teeming earth.