Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for March 01, 2025

Or, worse, a snot mouth pizzle.

These puzzle should have a warning that some assembly is required.

That I’m the missing piece actually gives me a ton of leverage. I mean, it would give me leverage, if I could just find a person who was sufficiently invested in completing their snout moth puzzle.

I shall fashion replacements from real moths!

According to jigsaw-wiki, there are less than 15 different shapes of the pieces in most puzzles. How hard would it be to include a few extra blank pieces of each of these shapes? So what if they don’t match the rest of the picture being assembled? At least the puzzle could be completed.

Ditrysia is a clade (group of organisms with a common ancestry) containing most of the butterflies and moths. Ditrysian females have separate openings for mating and for laying eggs. (di=two, trysis=opening)

And what if I am a missing piece of a snout moth puzzle?

Asking for a friend.

I’m just happy when a new Frog Applause appears.

The Japanese denizen, Mothra, must be a ‘snout mouth’. Otherwise it would uncoil a long tongue to lasso against monsters like Godzilla.

(BTW, I’ve had amateur interest in butterflies and moths all my life, and didn’t ever stop to think that some moth species did not have tongues that coil out to siphon nectar. Actually, come to think of it, I see snout mouth moths far more frequently than the other type. It gives me a shiver of delight to learn something new that I overlooked so long. Thanks, Teresa.)

I’m just happy that the moth and the puzzle are not up my snout…

…“What shall we use to fill the empty spaces…

…Where waves of hunger roar?…

…Shall we set out across the sea of faces…

…In search of more and more frog applause?”…

…

But I am a missing piece of a Snout Moth puzzle.

Size and Family: Family – Snouts (Noctuidae), Small Sized, Wingspan – 30-38mm

Conservation status: UK BAP: Not listed, Common

Caterpillar Food Plants: Common Nettle (Urtica dioica).

Habitat: Woodland, scrub, hedgerows, gardens, riverbanks, wetlands and a wide range of other places where the foodplant occurs.

If I were in a superfamily I wouldn’t give a rat’s a$$ about missing puzzle parts.

it’s complicated

I’ve always been a couple of pieces short of a full puzzle …

I’m just glad this moth’s not in my mouth … or up my snout!

Snout moths ate my mohair shorts, so now I have a fly front in the back.

Had to keep consciously rearranging the letters, my brain reads it a ‘snot mouth’.

Does the snot mouth have a smu(t) mouth?