🦋 Alie of the Woods 🦋

@humanbyweight.bsky.social

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Alie Kratzer | Engineer + Scientist + Entrepreneur + Author | 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ she/her

The front cover of my new field guide to widow spiders. The cover is artfully decorated with seven black, red, brown, and white spotted and striped spider illustrations showing some of the variability within the genus Latrodectus. A tiny male widow spider is positioned in the center on top of a spiky egg sac. From top to bottom, the text of the cover reads "Owlfly Publishing | Widow Spiders of the World | A Traveler's Guide to Dangerous Spiders | Written & Illustrated by Chris Alice Kratzer"
A box turtle sitting smugly on a pile of mulch. The turtle is a shiny dark gray with light orange splotches on her shell. She is about the size of a tea kettle.
A masked chafer beetle, which is a close relative of the more famous Hercules Beetle. Kind of like a younger cousin who looks up to them, I think. This one is a uniform shiny reddish-brown with wet-looking eyes and big feathered antennae. It is clinging to some fennel leaves upside-down.
A photograph I took today of a juniper hairstreak butterfly about the size of your fingernail. Its wings are richly brown, adorned with small black and white streaks, and dusted with a soft green – all of which allows it to blend in perfectly against its cedar (a.k.a. juniper) host plant. Two little “tails” protrude from its hindwings, which it moves back and forth at rest to resemble antennae. The tails exist for the hope that a predator would try to eat its expendable hindwings instead of its actual head. Its body is a soft and downy gray, but its legs and antennae are striped vibrantly black and white, which gives it the distinct impression of wearing thigh-high stockings. The butterfly is standing in an upright position atop some equally tiny white yarrow flowers.
A selfie of me, a thirty-or-forty-year-old white woman with long brown hair, a brown t-shirt, a blue headband, wide-rimmed glasses, and a black purse. I am framed by the cedar trees behind me. My hair gets frizzy in the summer humidity.
A mostly black-colored spittlebug-hunting wasp in the genus Clitemnestra, which is perched upon (and absolutely dwarfed by) my fingernail. I found this lovely lady on my way out of the office.
An email preview that reads "Found Bugs on your website -Lets Discuss ? - Hi there, Greetings of the day! While reviewing your site, I noticed a..."
A photograph of a honeybee - who appeared to be injured - with her mandibles clamped tightly onto the leg of a larger white-and-black bald-faced hornet. The hornet looks very done with the whole affair. Both are scrambling along a branch of honeysuckle.
A photo of the fruiting body of the "cedar-apple rust" fungus which resembles a neon orange squid clinging to the branch of a cedar tree. These are very common where I live in New Jersey, and I always look forward to seeing them in the spring.
A cropped anatomical diagram of the ventral side of a cobweb spider. Four legs are splayed out on either side of the central cephalothorax. The cephalothorax is tinted green, the legs blue, and the opisthosoma purple. Several small labels point to various features: (3) chelicera, (4) maxilla, (5) sternum/basisternum, (6) epigyne. The labium is barely visible beneath the maxillae.
A photo of me (a woman with long brown hair, a magenta shirt, and glasses) smiling while standing in the office, holding a bundled shipment of metal robotics frames like they're some sort of JRPG weapon. However, I've never held a JRPG weapon before, so I look rather more like someone's white mom about to try kayaking for the first time.
A screenshot of the "spiders" folder on my desktop. Some of the "spiders" have large colorful yellow wings with black stripes. Other "spiders" are long and wormlike, in shades of green and brown. They are named normal "spider" names like "Papilio glaucus", a well-known "spider". I would definitely never work on a new project before a current project was done.
plump green branching moss fronds in the genus Entodon
A selfie of me, a white woman with big glasses and her hair tied back. I'm partially obscured by a T-slot frame of an unidentifiable machine, which is an engineer's natural habitat. I am smiling awkwardly with a peace sign.
A photograph of a common american harvester that I found almost a decade ago. Its body is reddish brown and looks miniscule surrounded by its extremely long and spindly black legs. It rests on a leaf. Menacingly.
Two profile pictures with a black arrow in the middle pointing to the right. The pfp on the left is the one I've been using since 2023, and the pfp on the right is the one I drew today. Both icons show a white woman with brown hair, glasses, an antenna headband, and a strangely familiar-looking blue, pink, and white butterfly perched on the side of her face. I think my art has improved a lot in the past three years!
Four panels that show the same painting of a redback spider at various steps in my scientific illustration process. From left to right, the text reads: "Step 9: Main Color, Step 10: Detail Color, Step 11: Outlines, Step 12: Remove Mask".
A half-finished digital painting of a tiger swallowtail butterfly, which is pale yellow with jagged black stripes.
A black butterfly-looking silhouette against a blue and red background, inspired by the memes for "Who's That Pokemon?"
The "After all, why not?" LOTR meme, with the bottom text reading "Why shouldn't I study Lepidoptera...?"
Two books are propped upright against a wooden cabinet, titled "The Cicadas of North America" and "The Social Wasps of North America". Both books show many colorful examples of the respective insects on their covers. Various holiday ribbons, garlands, and lights are strewn about the edges and foreground of the photo, which I shamelessly pilfered from my mom's attic. The text at the top reads "FREE SHIPPING ON ALL QUALIFIED ORDERS".
Four dorks (affectionate) stand in celebratory poses in the middle of an empty factory floor. The Owlfly logo is emblazoned at the top of the image. This space will soon be used to manufacture our new safe and efficient home thermal insulation.
Two yellowjacket workers share a befuddled glance over one of their paper combs. The wasps are black with yellow stripes and the nest is brown and white, layered in hexagonal combs.
A selfie of me (a white woman with long tousled brown hair, glasses, and a thick gray coat over a red holiday sweater) holding a pumpkin-sized live yellowjacket comb with my bear hands and smiling
An illustration of the bean-shaped spermathecae and highly coiled epigyna of a female black widow spider.
The two winning photos of the 2025 Owlfly Photo Contest. The photo on the left shows a pair of grinding spoonwing scissor grinders on their very own page of my field guide, which has an illustration to match. Little paper cutouts of blue pants and a pink shirt that says "GRINDING' 2025" are strewn on the page next to the action. The photo on the right shows a tasteful over-the-shoulder POV of the same book open to a page about pharaoh periodical cicadas. The page is covered with seven live black-and-orange pharaoh periodical cicadas.
A photo of two women on an ice cream date
A photograph of a newly-emerged monarch butterfly hanging from a twig next to its chrysalis, which is now empty. The butterfly is orange with black stripes and white spots.
A grid of 45 white squares, each of which contains six or eight black dots, drawn by me. They look kind of like Rorschach ink blot tests. They definitely aren't watching you back...
A collage of photos from the 2025 Owlfly Photo contest, showing various live insects sitting on or next to their respective illustrations in an Owlfly field guide. Our readers are so cool!!!
Four different font options for the logo of YellowJacket insulation. Each is positioned next to a cute black-and-white wasp character wearing a literal yellow jacket. Font "A" is sleek and narrow and somewhat art deco. Font "B" is narrow with extended lettering, more like a sportswear brand. Font "C" is bold and blocky with curved edges and a friendly feel. Font "D" is also bold and blocky, but more angled, with little indents in the e's and the t's.
A photograph of a large dead yellow-legged hornet. The hornet's body is mostly black, gilded with gold at its extremities. Photo ©Nico Blüthgen (2024), CC-0.
A sneak peak of a illustrated plate from Widow Spiders of the World. The male and female of a species is shown, along with a close-up of the hourglass pattern at the bottom, juvenile color forms in an arc across the center, and an egg sac in the upper right. A range map in Dymaxion projection is tastefully superimposed onto the background. The male spider is gangly and brown, but his abdomen has bright black and white stripes with red spots. The female is a shiny black with bold red stripes. The egg sac is golden and spiky.
A photo of a nearly microscopic wingless wasp, taken by my friend Lyn Roueche. The wasp is very ant-like in appearance, though it is not at all closely related to true ants. It has a square-shaped head, a long thorax, and a very large teardrop-shaped abdomen. The plates of the abdomen have a scalloped appearance. The wasp is colored like smoldering embers in a fire.
A photo of a hummingbird looking directly into the camera with the most New Jersey expression I have ever seen on a bird
Three pretty blue butterflies (which are questionably named "Red-Spotted Purples") sitting on (and sipping from) a rotting red watermelon rind on my porch railing. Two more sit just out of frame. They crave that mineral.
A photo of me holding a medium-sized snake I caught in the woods. The snake is black with vivid yellow stripes running down the length of its body. It is a very cool and glamorous image so long as you ignore the white goop on my hands where the snake decided to poop on me.
A simple graphic that shows the Owlfly logo above the text "NOW HIRING! Industrial Engineer, Accountant (CPA)".
A photo of a Slaty Skimmer dragonfly that I took at the Plainsboro Preserve when I worked there as a summer camp counselor back in 2015. The dragonlfy is striped with yellow and brown with big olive eyes.
A close-up photo of my face, with a black-and-orange cicada sitting on my nose.
A set of six graphs that show the dynamic response of our prototype Inertial Measurement Machine. The graphs are labeled "Voltage / Current", "Angular Position", "Torque", "Power", "Angular Velocity / Angular Acceleration", and "Moment-of-Inertia". Each one shows a spiky periodic wave function. You can learn more about Inertial Measurement Machines on the Owlfly LLC website under "Patents".
The cover of the book "The Social Wasps of North America". Many wasps of all shapes, sizes, and colors are arranged radially out from the center.
A drawing of a deer furry angrily yelling "NO KINGS". The outline of a wolf skull is superimposed over her face. American stars and stripes decorate the text.
A photo of four gals getting ice cream. These bitches gay
[freeze frame] Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation, clinging to the textured wall inside a log cabin, my head hitting the roof. Well, you see, my fiancée was unable to stop me, because I am an adult human woman and she thinks my antics are cute.
A photo of a white woman with long brown hair and big glasses wearing a teal shirt standing in a forest. She is grinning and holding an insulation prototype over her head.
A mechanical diagram that shows a cross-section of a complicated apparatus. Each component is numbered. Several gears transmit motion from motors at the bottom to belts or chains via a single central axis. I'm mostly just sharing this image because it looks cool, since it does not convey much information on its own without the accompanying 30 pages of hardcore engineering context.
A photo of a red-and-black wasp taking flight from the stem of a wildflower. A book is open in the background of the photo with an illustration depicting exactly the same species of wasp.
A little green cicada with eyes and wings that are far too large for its body. It is very round-shaped with a black stripe around its middle and a white belly. Truly the platonic ideal of a cicada
An illustration of a spider that looks as though it just finished rolling around in a stellar nebula. The spider is mostly black, but its opisthosoma (abdomen) is covered in bright spots like a miniature constellation. The spider may look frightening to some folks, but worry not - widow spiders are really just big dorky scaredy cats.
A promotional flyer that says "THEY'RE COMING" in big letters at the top. The background image shows a little orange-and-black cicada peering around a branch. The cover of my book "The Cicadas of North America" is shown on the left. A label at the bottom says "Use coupon code BROODXIV for 20% off The Cicadas of North America, now thru June!"
A teeny tiny baby crayfish sitting on my fingernail, pondering his place in the universe.
A large green-and-black adult cicada resting on my finger.
The response meme of a sapphic girl with the text bubble "Have you guys ever seen how pretty girls are because holy shit fuck god fuck fuck god damn it shit fuck god oh god please help me"
A cartoony drawing of a white woman sitting on a desk, gesturing to a blackboard that says "ALIE'S OFFICE HOURS". The woman is wearing color-coordinated summer attire and looks happy to be there. Several people's arms are raised in the foreground, as though waiting to ask her questions. A tiny trans flag peeks out of a cup on the desk.
A complex transparent 3D model of a sphere interlaid with 3 reinforced axes. Two steel spheres rest along the vertical axis. This entire assembly is made from just two unique 3D printed parts. This isn't the final model, since I'm just the idea girl, and Zoey (our automation engineer) is likely going to make it even better. No pressure on her, though. 😋
The cover of my book, "The Cicadas of North America". The cover shows the title in the top-center, with "Owlfly Publishing" along the top edge and "written & illustrated by Chris Alice Kratzer" at the bottom. There are 22 cicadas of various shapes and sizes arranged radially out from the center. Their colors range from brilliant reddish-orange to deep black, sandy yellow, forest green, and foamy turquoise. It seems like someone really put a lot of effort into this!
A map of North America with the Brood XIV cicada emergence highlighted in blue. The brood more-or-less follows the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.
A selfie of a laughing woman sitting up in bed. She is breasting boobily in what her government would describe as "a very manly sort of way". She is wearing a cami without her glasses on because she decided the best use of her time was scrolling on her phone before she gets ready for the day. She is white with brown hair and blue eyes and knows that making fun of fascists really hurts their feelings. Behold, a man.
Flat green mushroom-shaped colonies of Nostoc cyanobacteria growing on a rock pulled out of a stream, each about 1 to 2 centimeters across. I would have thought they were some kind of algae! These bacteria have seriously lost the plot.