Sometimes you should look down

I’ve had so many people give me a hard time for how much time I spend looking at the ground.  I’ve never really understood why.  There’s lots of good reasons to look down.  Like if you’re walking through a swamp, you will trip on a root or a cypress knee if you’re not looking down.  (Sometimes you’ll trip even if you’re looking right at the root or knee, but that’s another story :P.)

There’s also all the fascinating little things so many people miss.  Like these beetles:

I spotted the larger one while I was hiking today; it came out of the dried grass jungle rolling along a fragment of what looked like mushroom.  On closer inspection, I saw there was a smaller beetle clinging to the fragment, being rolled along with it.

The larger beetle rolled the two along for quite a while.  I imagine that fragment was extra heavy with the small beetle on it, and the big beetle soon stopped.  I’d lost sight of them for a moment, but by the time I found them again, the big beetle had evicted the small one and was rolling the fragment along again.  It did move much more quickly with just the fragment. 

The small beetle stayed still for some time.  Then it chased after the big beetle to try to steal the fragment again (not that I know who originally claimed it; I kind of came in in the middle of the action).  So they fought again, and the big beetle won once again.  This time the small beetle flew in the opposite direction of the big beetle and landed somewhere near where they originally came from.

(For size reference, above are the beetles and the fragment in my shoe print.)