Snow Flea

Hypogastrura nivicola

The snow flea is rarely found alone. Though if it were, who but another snow flea would notice it against the snow, a single speck of pepper, a mote of ash? Come March & they move en masse, transhumant across their blue-shadowed host. Approach too close & they start to rocket about like acrobats in a mad flea circus. There’s safety in numbers, & in the unpredictability of a random launch — the wingless springtail’s main defense. True, one sometimes goes straight up & returns to the same, dangerous spot, but what bird wants to mess with such unquiet seeds?

The snow flea is as self-reliant as its cousin the true flea is dependent. It absorbs moisture through a feeding tube in its abdomen & breathes directly through its thick skin. Its blood contains a protein that prevents it from ever freezing & hardening into knives.

The snow flea never stops molting, even after becoming an adult. Life alternates between two phases, mating & eating, with a complete change of skin after each. Nor does the fastidiousness end there: all reproduction is by post. The male deposits a tidy packet of sperm at some convenient location & the female stops by later & picks it up. To everything its season. And when the snow melts? The snow flea walks on water if it must, & returns at last — recalcitrant seasoning — to the soil’s dark goulash.