The Mystery of the Multiplying Caterpillar

If a man jogs all the way down the road and happens to see that his neighbors are home, he'll stop for an evening chat. If the discussion turns to wondering about the battalion of fascinating black caterpillars that are marching through their yard, he'll say he doesn't know what they are, but he knows someone who does. If he gently picks one up and safely carries it a full mile back the way he came, he'll deposit the bewildered spiky insect in his wife's hands. If she has never seen one before and hasn't got a clue what type of butterfly larva it is, she'll click around online. If she finds the perfect match, it will be a species that lives in Europe.

Europe?

Wrong answer.

But if the online images of that butterfly's wings look vaguely similar (in pattern, but not color) to one that does live on the windswept North American plains, all that sleuthing might not have been in vain. And if I'm fresh out of Snapdragons but the apparently somewhat-slightly-related European critter likes Nettles, you know I grabbed a scissors, a jar, and a flashlight, and ran straight out past the barn, through the corral, and behind one of the gardens to a big old patch of Stinging Nettle.

Not literally, I mean.

Don't run with scissors. Ever. Especially in the dark, when half-grown cats are liable to come creeping along the darkest shadows of the garden path and ambush innocent seekers of Stinging Nettle. Stranger things have happened, believe me.

If the caterpillar happily munches away on that nasty stuff, I might mutter "Homeostasis is at ninety-five percent".

If a Bio-Dome quote randomly surfaces, there must be a former Pauly Shore fan in the house.

If that's embarrassing, let's pretend it didn't happen.

The critter seemed happy enough so I tossed the jar on a shelf for a day or three.

Welcome to the The Old Nichols Farm... where the wackiness level fluctuates between "coconut" and "fruitcake" depending on whether we had oatmeal for breakfast, the Earth's geomagnetic activity (honestly - I've tracked it long enough to know), and how many fireflies are loose in the house.

Fruitcake:

I have no idea what that thing is. She found it in the yard. I caught her just in time to save a very trusting cat (please don't ask).

So I know you won't be surprised. In the least. I mean, I wasn't. What? When I casually mention that we popped the lid off that jar a perfectly responsible amount of time later (cough, cough) to give our captive some fresh food. We carefully dumped the jar upside down and found...

Two?

What? What!

Yes, in our jar.

Exactly identical.

What on earth!?



My first thought was that someone had played a great joke on us. However, my awareness of our household having entered The Fruitcake Zone told me that much more fantastic options had the possibility of being true. Anything, people. Anything is possible.

Sure enough, that patch of Stinging Nettle had been attacked. Eaten up. We found a swarm of spikey black caterpillars all over the remaining plants. I somehow managed to identify our caterpillar so perfectly that I had inadvertently collected another one a few nights prior. And strangely enough, as many times as we had inspected that jar we had only ever seen one.

If you tell me something that bizarre can happen in The Coconut Zone, I'll tell you you're crazy.

Fruitcake Queen. I'm putting it on my resume.