Ah, nature!

Drained. On this beautiful day, I painted (the porch) all day almost nonstop.
Thought a great deal about my Aunt Carolyn today. She had an inordinate fear of worms, snakes and low-riding slithery things in general. Freud would have drooled over her, even probably taken her to lunch. The reason that Carolyn, dead now quite a few years, was in mind today was because it was raining caterpillars. Really. All day long, I heard the plop of their fat bodies, countless and unrelenting. They hit the porch, they hit the newly painted steps, they hit my van, they hit piles of leaves-I'm sure they are still falling out there (almost) noiselessly in the dark.
They have few predators- heard a long time ago that they've got a very nasty taste (nope, I never tried one) and that keeps them off many menus. Moving around today was an exercise in caution-it seems as though each and every step brought the possibility of several attempted caterpillar suicides. Everytime I was about to make a stroke with the brush, I'd find these critters in the way and have to gingerly sweep them away with my hand.
They move swiftly, with purpose and direction. When you stop or try and redirect them, indecision paralyzes them-or maybe they just play dead. S'pose I'm being presumptive in thinking that I can read these little buggers, but I did spend quite a few hours in their company today.
Occasionally, clusters of them would gather, lined up like miniature wriggling busses, waiting for a dispatcher to send them hurtling off. I never did understand why they gathered or what they were attracted to. Probably rallying for a mass attack. That's what they are doing in the dark-like a Hitchcock scenario...
When I was a kid, I remember my father making a long handled pole/torch out of an old rag and some gasoline and burning the caterpillars and their tents up high. I did this myself a couple times, but I missed the point. These guys come back whether wanted or not. I just hope that they'll spare my vegetable garden, the first one that I have planted in many years. I was hoping for some salad later in the year, but these little creepers might beat me to it.