Alien invasion?

This is the week of the 2017 solar eclipse, and I have been staring up into the sky, a lot. With all the celestial commentating the past week, I have been thinking more about life in outer space, and the possibilities of that life reaching earth.  What does this have to do with the preserve??  Well, we find many things on the preserve that remind me of, and I cannot say 100% did not come from outer space.  ManySci-fi movies eerily portray alien creatures that look very similar to things we find creeping around the preserve.  Here are a few videos from our lab (turning up your volume might make this theory more convincible)  that star creatures that could possibly be from another world......I'm just saying.

"They" say this is a mantidfly, Climaciella brunnea, a paper wasp mimic that has an alien head and preying mantis arms.  It mimics paper wasps because they lay their eggs on wasp larva in the nests.  I'm pretty sure I've seen this creature in a black and white sci-fi movie when I was 10.

Maybe the comedians of SNL weren't joking when they portrayed aliens as coneheads.  There are coneheads (katydids) out right now at night buzzing in fields.  This Neoconocephalus retusus is Awfully alien-like I'd say.

This video of a hairy slitmouth snail, Stenotrema hirsutum, looks like a creature emerging from a rock on the dark side of the moon.

Are these clam shrimps (Cyzicus sp.?) found in a tire rut, or what alien eggs look like?  I'm not sure.  The eggs of clam shrimps can lay dormant withstanding drought, freeze and pressure for several years.  Sounds astronomical to me.

Very tribble-like (if you watched Star Trek from the 1960's), this moth caterpillar seems to have a protective fuzzy covering.  A stellar coincidence that Hollywood would know this??

On earth we call these black fly larva, Simuliidae, but to me this video looks like some sort of transedental communication occurrence.

This extraterrestrial looking caterpillar is known as the monkey slug, Phoebtron pithecium.  Its slug-like movement and stinging hairs remind me of a creature that would have chased astronauts in the old show Space Patrol.  Discalimer:  Unlike the television shows from the 1950's,  this video may contain language unsuitable for younger viewers.  Not meant to offend, but intended to illustrate the supernatural affect these creatures have on folks!

To me, the similarities are uncanny.  But when I was younger my mother always said I should be an astronaut, or astronomer..... or maybe she just said I was taking up space.....I can't remember.  Either way, this unknown, ethereal world we live in already contains sci-fi creatures waiting to be explored.

Posted by Mark Zloba