Auntie B's Wax

It was a rainy day and I had big plans to wash the floors.  Yep, those are the perks to retirement life – plenty of time to wash floors and no excuse not to.  Before I began my task I stood at the patio doors and took in the gloomy, rainy day.

Something caught my attention in the pergola above the deck.  Withered leaves hanging from small twigs of a vine, ready to fall after a hot summer.  Except wait a minute.  That’s a leaf, but that other thing isn’t.  I stepped out into the light rain to get a closer look.

ACK!  There, hanging from one of those spindly vine twigs, was the biggest, grossest caterpillar I’d ever seen.  It was about as thick as a cigar and at least three inches long, probably more.  There was a fleshy quality to its body that made me think it was some kind of alien.  I called Husby out to look at it.  He seemed nonplussed at first, but eventually took as much interest in this giant, crawly thing as I.

The part closest to the leaf is the alien’s head. It protrudes and retracts into its fleshy body like a turtle’s would.

It took me forever to wash the floors because I kept looking out the window to see if my alien invader was still there, hanging in the rain.  He didn’t move much, but now I could see he was eating one of the leaves on the vine.  Great, not only do we have Japanese beetles tearing into our flora but also a big, globular, creepy worm.  Plus, Husby saw it exude poop!  The excrement was as big as a rabbit pellet!

That’s way too much information, but needless to say I was sufficiently creeped out by this thing but equally, if not more so, fascinated by it.  Husby did some research and found out it’s a Brown Caterpillar and will eventually turn into something like this:

Our creepy alien friend invader decided to turn around and find some other delicious leaves to devour and eventually I lost track of it.  He’s up there though, slowly wriggling between the leaves and twigs, I just know it.  When I see a moth with a four-foot wing span clinging to our patio window I’ll know where it came from.  Until then, I’ll only see this monster in my nightmares.

What’s crawling around in your yard?

*Questions?  Go ask Alice…in Wonderland.