Can a splattered Polyfylla Fullo be an angel?

The subject of this post is maybe far from the topics of my rental units but it wants to be a suggestion to travellers: beauty is everywhere; it is the astonishing product of the world. Sometimes angels announce that, as it happened to me. When I was a kid I had a strange hobby, at least for a child: entomology. I was particularly fond of Coleoptera. Once, when I was about nine-ten years old, I was walking with my dad and my mum along an urban street in the centre of Cuneo, a town in Piemonte, in the North-West of Italy. Suddenly I saw a squashed Polyfylla Fullo [http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polyphylla_fullo.jpg] on the sidewalk. A Polyfylla Fullo is a marvellous rare scarab living only in some parts of Italy where pine trees are widely present. I broke down in tears and shouted: “who did kill a Polyfylla Fullo? Who’s the killer?” I can’t describe the comments of astonished people around seeing a child crying for a bug with a very strange name. Actually it was a very exceptional fact to see a specimen of that scarab in an urban environment very far from any pine forest. Entomology ended when I discovered that it was better to search feminine specimens of our species. In thirty five years I never found anyone knowing what is a Polyfilla Fullo, I never had the occasion to see it again live or dead in a museum, the memories of a crying child were buried under the weight of a life, I never read anything else about that species. 

On a morning of July 2006 I was biking in the centre of Bologna, the town where I live and occasionally saw my wife exactly where my office is located. Of course I stopped and asked if she was going to the office, but she explained our encounter was absolutely occasional. In that moment I saw a splattered Polyfylla Fullo on the sidewalk. “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” I use the words of Ricky Fitts in “American beauty” to explain what I felt and probably, in that circumstance, I smiled as he did in one of the last shots of the film in front of the splattered brain of Lester Burnham. That squashed scarab was surely an angel. It was certainly God who sent it to me. There was no other deduction to make. The closest pine forest is hundreds of kilometres far, Bologna counts 500,000 inhabitants and notoriously, being a medieval town, has only a few squares or parks with trees, anyway with no pine trees. The place of appearance was accurately chosen. Improbable events happen everyday but that one was a highly improbable event with a precise significance in my life. I suddenly understood that God, in a world of billions of people, dedicated ten minutes to me. 

Comments

[Kswise]

We need more stories like this Paolo! You have still the eyes of the child - more people should have this!
Actually, my daughter also loved insects as a child - I have a beautiful memory of her walking into a swarm of dragonflies when she was quite young. They moved all around her without hitting her at all....how beautiful that was. And one time, camping out in Wisconsin, a very large and beautiful moth follwed her "home" and climbed into ehr sleeping bag. I do believe they can be angels.
Myself, I have only been visited by the angels of writers past.... another story...
thank you so much for sharing!

[BrittArnhild]

What a beautiful angel story Paolo. Thank you for sharing.
And by the way, I love your childhood hobby :-)