Caterpillars!

I wracked my brain for a solid 45 seconds trying to come up with a cute punny title for this post about caterpillars, and I couldn't, yet I must say my peace. (Or my piece, I don't know which it is...) The exclamation point is all I've got for cuteness this time.

Anyway, we didn't get any cicadas up here, which makes it safe for me to claim that I would have eaten some if only they were around. (I've heard more than once that they taste like "minty shrimp," and I can't decide if that sounds like something good.) Instead of cicadas, we got bucketloads of the decidedly inedible but much less noisy Eastern Tent Caterpillars.

I mean, they are all over the place. The last time I went running I was getting ankle cramps trying to dodge them on the sidewalk until I finally gave up and figured I could always wash the guts off the bottom of my sneakers. For those who are interested, if you get them just right they do make an audible pop -- I know, even with no chitinous exoskeleton, can you believe it? -- and their innerds are bright green and come shooting out one end like toothpaste. (Hm, maybe they are minty after all).

Far more serious than gumming up the tread of my running shoes is the consequence of a serious tent caterpillar infestation: they defoliate certain kinds of trees, which in turn detracts from the autumn leaf color show that New England tourism depends on.

Even more serious than that is the subtle sense of dread the little demons have injected into my lunchtime. In light of the relatively few warm sunny days we get up here in these parts, summertime finds all of us basement-dwellers up blinking our eyes in the sunshine, taking our lunchbreak out on the back lawn of the psychology building. Lately our midday reverie has been punctuated by periodic shrieks and spasms when one of the girls -- I won't say which ones, but it is always one of the girls, so sue me for being sexist -- finds one of the crawlies on her foot/leg/ arm, which, given the season, is as likely as not to be bare. The foot/leg/arm, I mean. Well, I guess the caterpillar is bare, too, if you don't count the fuzz, but they're always bare. You know what I meant.

Now, I like watching girls scream and freak out when they touch something icky as much as anyone, but it does get tiresome while you're trying to eat and converse, and what's worse is that it draws your attention to the ground around you as you check to see if you, also, are about to be crawled upon by a caterpillar. And you are. Once you look around, you come to the unsettling realization that there are hordes of the things crawling through the grass, and they're all headed right toward you. Say you pick a few up ("With your fingers?! Eeeew!") and fling them away. They come back. Say you get up and scout out a new grassy spot with no sign of caterpillars and settle down anew. Three shakes, and they've found you. Inching along, slowly but surely, deterred only by obliteration, like little furry zombies. (And no, that was not an oblique reference to John Kerry, who is certainly not little, nor, as far as I know, furry. I said I wasn't gonna do that kind of thing anymore.)

What all of the preceding is really about is setting up justification for a particularly ugly bit of violence I engaged in recently. Last weekend, I followed Laurie out into her garden to see if she was growing anything I wanted to eat help out, and whaddya know but it's pulsing with the furry black devils. (My god, do you think the phrase "black devils" is going to bring all sorts of creepy white supremicists to the site via Google? I mean, I'd like more traffic and everything but I'm not that desperate. If I were, I'd do much better by dropping in mentions of REAL NUDE GIRLS, etc., don't you think?) Laurie, for what it's worth, makes absolutely the most entertaining girlie gross-out noises I've ever heard. But something about her shrieks brought out the knight in shining armor within, or alternatively, the 12-year-old boy within, and I grabbed a stick and went completely kung-fu on about a zillion caterpillars. No, make that "went completely Tarantino" because there was way more minty green guts than you'll ever see in a kung-fu movie.

It was a foul deed, I'll admit, but don't you see, I HAD to do it. Think of the poor garden vegetables, devoured as Laurie looked on, screaming in distress! Think of the New England tourist economy!





I'm a bad person, aren't I?