September 23, 2012

• caterpillars

  The other day I was at work studying the little terrariums we made for our monarch caterpillars.  Cleaning up caterpillar poop has been one of my current joys.  Actually it doesn’t bother me anymore.  In any case, this whole thing is fascinating stuff. 

  Retrospective section:  Spawn’s first grade teacher was huge into the butterfly movement.  Like an expert somehow.  Anyhow the first day of first grade, I walked into the room with her and her teacher was completely going gaga over a caterpillar making the “j” which she said she had never seen happen before.  Pretty impressive first experience in first grade.  My LLO is majorly into bugs and we’ve had caterpillars several times at home.  At home, I can ignore the whole scene.  Or perhaps I was ignoring everything at that time.  Who knows.  Every other year the primary division at school gets caterpillar eggs, takes care of the caterpillars, watches the whole metamorphosis, identifies the monarchs (ladies and gents), tags and lets them go.  Gotta go gotta go gotta go to Mexico.  This is my second time with that.

  Anyhow, the fat juicy caterpillars seem to like to do their trick on the netting at the top of the terrarium.  So the other day I was trying to decide whether the caterpillar crawling on the netting was thinking about doing the “j” thing just for me or just taking a stroll.  So I watched.  What I noticed (which makes perfect sense now that I think about it) was that the movement action starts from the end.  The back legs scootch up first.  Then the next back and so on until the head gets moving where it wants to go.  The ripple action completes before the next step is taken.  The caterpillar gets where he’s going when he gets there.  I didn’t get to see any of them do the “j” thing, but here’s one who is just hanging around.

  

  Here’re the two I was watching walk around the day before.

  

  Of course in nature, they aren’t going to do their trick on some netting.  This guy probably is more like what happens.

  

  I didn’t see him at first and almost rocked his little world.  Check out that little black mess at the top.  It’s the caterpillar legs!  LLO told me that of course they do that.  But I’d never seen it. Never even wondered where the legs went.  Butterflies are a magical mystery to me and disappearing legs seemed the least of it.  But there they are. And something else I never thought about.  The cocoon is green for a reason.  The green seemed as strange to me as the gold rim.  It’s clear that the green color makes perfect sense. (That leaf being milkweed, just in case you were wondering.)  Monarch caterpillars eat a lot of it.

  So here I am. Newly aware of the world around me.  And I have reflections and connections to make from the awareness.  First of all, a change in direction starts from the small end.  It really takes small steps and the parts working together to get something moving in the direction you want.  Leadership in the world of caterpillars has nothing to do with the head dragging everyone else along.  Secondly, you are your environment.  Monarch caterpillars have an excellent reason to eat milkweed.  It makes them bitter and keeps them safe.  And really they have no choice, they were designed that way.  And I will just leave it at that. 

  • 5:12 pm
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