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| Articles: Dead Caterpillars |
Posted by
Comedian on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 02:45 PM PST
During those few weeks when it's too hot to be called spring and too cool to call smmer, there's a lull that settles over everything and seems to make the idea of a siesta more and more appealing boring towards summer.
The days are sunny and bright, and down here there's a few clouds that play across the sky, moving fast with the wind pushing their shadows across the landscape, which can create a magical play across the pavements and sidewalks as children who are nearing the end of their school year wind up and get ready to escape outside again.
The children, hordes of them, crowd outside their schools on hot days and play in the yards, the heat baking the gravel of the playground and making it really intolerable. A few pass out sometimes, heat stroke or just too much sun too soon, and they are hauled back into the air-conditioned building to look out the windows of the nurses office at the outside trees. At least, that's how it was back when i did the passing out.
Nature's now in bloom, the dormancy of winter completely thrown away for the rich and gaudy shades of green, the blooms of flowers and the smells of trees and vines that entwine buildings reaching out to the busy streets where they can hit you hard, if you're not expecting it and stepping out from the musk of crowds or the fumes of cars.
The caterpillars are climbing out of the trees now, and in the districts of the city where trees line both sides of the street and create a canopy of branches over the road, you can see dead caterpillars lining the city sidewalks. The children and walkers step on them absentmindedly; thicker shoes and enough body weight make their bodies indistinguishable from the grass that now creeps up through the cracks in the sidwalk. If you're lucky you can squat down and see one during it's migration, a tiny creature that bears the marks of nature as a thing not to eat, moving slowly across the sidewalk, displaced, moving gradually to the other side of green across a sea of grey. Their rythm is eerie and disconcerting to people, but they are amazing little creatures, the fur lining their frames undulating and rippling just slightly after the rest of the frame trembles in preparation for the next big push.
But it's a pity to see them dead, these bugs. Their half-crushed frames can writhe for a moment before the spark of life flares out, and they bleed. they bleed and it dries quickly in the sunlight, becoming stains of green and yellow and green on the pavement that will fade with the coming rain showers. So many of them are dead now, I find it hard to walk along the tree-lined streets. Natural selection is a treagedy in itself, but random destruction is a worse thing to behold.
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| Dead Caterpillars | Login/Create an account | 2 Comments |
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Re: Dead Caterpillars
by Ironboots on May 02, 2002 - 05:02 PM
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Yes, why must we bugger (no pun, please) with animals that share our environment?
I found a fuzzy caterpillar one day (very cute, and rare in SoCali, for it was fuzzy) but my father said I should kill it because "it'll kill our plants" What's one freakin' cute caterpillar going to do? And if he does do something, what's the loss, besides the leaves on some plants? I convinced him to keep him in a jar as my pet and I let the poor thing back into the garden as soon as my father's back was turned.
Then last night, a possum was cornered (literally, cornered) by my father. The poor thing was frightened to death, what with my brother shining a mag-lite at him and my father shooting him with a pellet gun. He killed the thing, too... I was inside. I wouldn't be party to something like that. All that poor creature wanted was to live in peace, and to get something to eat! What did it ever do to my dad? Killing for food is one thing, but killing for peace of mind is totally wrong.
But back to mindless killing... We don't have the hordes of caterpillars... We just have hordes of snails and worms when it rains... Then the poor buggers, like your caterpillars, are run over. I don't see why people (walking) cannot avoid them...
Bah on people that do that, I say...
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