Fire Ant Flickers (#4)

The Worm Turns

Alert Gazette readers know that walnut moth caterpillars are the bane of my existence twice every year (they have a spring life cycle and another in late summer). They eat the leaves on our pecan tree; they poop all over our deck; they drop out of the trees and swarm around creepily until they burrow into the ground and start their life cycle again.

In the past, I’ve attempted to interdict that life cycle by picking up and placing the caterpillars in a bucket until they expire. The sight of scores of writhing caterpillars is slightly unnerving, and I admit that I sometimes wonder if I’m being cruel (the feeling passes at the first sight of a frass-covered patio).

Anyway, the summer caterpillar-on-porch phenomenon coincided with a visit from our six-year-old great-niece, and without any prompting (really!), she asked if she could pick them up. I immediately consented and provided her with a bucket. She collected a dozen or so before she lost interest, but after her visit I continued to add to the collection.

For some unknown reason, this year’s second invasion was lighter than usual, and I forgot about the bucket o’worms for a week or so. When I finally noticed it again, all of the caterpillars had — at first glance — gone to that Great Pecan Tree In The Sky. At this point, I normally would have dumped the bucket over the fence and put it away until the next incursion.

Instead, I looked closer at the presumed deceased caterpillars, and it was obvious that instead of dying they had somehow…changed. Here’s how they now looked:

You’re probably way ahead of me here, but what we’re seeing is the pupate form of the walnut caterpillar. Normally, the caterpillars would have burrowed into the ground and metamorphosed into what you’re now seeing. And even though we denied them their usual location, the process was unstoppable.

The pupae would normally overwinter underground and then re-emerge in the spring as, well, very hungry caterpillars. I had always envisioned them as being inert, as perhaps in a state of suspended animation. In the pupa stage, they neither eat or drink…but they’re very much alive, and they respond to stimuli as evidenced by this short video I captured with my phone:

I’m not sure if or at what point these pupae give up and/or give up the ghost, so to speak. I think I’m going to leave them in a container in the garage and see if they’ll finish their normal life cycle and emerge as moths next year. If they do, I’ll have learned something; if they don’t, I’ll have learned something but also will have diminished the moth population, albeit by a minuscule amount.

Ignorant Punditry Follows…

I know full well that you don’t come here for political punditry, and it’s a good thing because I’m eminently ill-equipped and too uninformed to offer it. But I can’t resist sliding something in sideways every now and then.

I didn’t watch The Debate II on Tuesday. I couldn’t discern the value of spending time watching two unqualified people try to demonstrate which of them is least unqualified to an audience of people whose minds are already made up, and so I spent the evening playing pickleball with my wife. But the inevitable and unending debriefing has been inescapable, and it made me think of Jesus’ words as recorded in the book of Matthew (chapter 26, verse 52). He said — and I paraphrase — he that lives by the sword, dies by the sword.

If you substitute debate for sword, you might conclude, as I have, that it now has a political implication. And the irony is massive.

Is there a doctor in the gallery?

There’s no real reason you should remember the Lego Pain Assessment chart that I wrote about a few years ago. The only reason I even bring it up is because I ran across the following earlier this year (typos not mine):

If we have to sit for interminable periods in an exam room, we might as well absorb a little culture, amirite?

Closing shot: You know who you are.