Today, as I briskly walked to the liquor store, I came across quite the unusual scene.
Caterpillars.
At LEAST thirty of them, milling about confus-ed-ly on two or three squares of sidewalk across the street from my apartment. I was carefully entering this thriving minefield when a very small woman in a very large fedora screamed ‘WATCH FOR CATERPILLARS! IT’S CATERPILLAR CRAZY OUT HERE!!’ as her friend slowly backed away. She was attempting to lure them away one by one via twig with a very low success rate. I gave her an affirmational grin and tip-toed my way around them, unable to join the effort due to crazy Minnesota liquor store hours.
Thinking it would be interesting to photograph, I made it a point to walk the same way home to check if that particular block was still abustle with furry friends, and if so grab my telephoto lens and go wild.
About 10 minutes later, red wine in hand, I re-entered the previously lively area to a scene unrecognizable from before.
It was carnage.
Robins pecking at lifeless limbs, sickly wetted pavement beneath crushed caterpillars, not a one even twitching. Two caterpillars on either side of one block of pavement formed the most morbid set of parentheses I’ve ever laid eyes on, bodies strewn in between and a dismembered head acting as the period to the sad sentence that told the story of their deaths.
As I turned away I couldn’t help conjuring up this scene at the end of Titanic. I was as much that rescue boat captain come too late as the fedora’d gal was the unsinkable Molly Brown…only this time there was no Rose. No shrill whistle blown, no green leaf to wrap around the near dead bug, and perhaps most miserable of all, no tragically brave ladypillar to hide from the bad gentlepillar and create her own life as a beautifully heartbroken butterfly with caterpillar Jack’s last name, retelling her story to caterpillar scientists searching for a considerably smaller gemstone outside the Uptown Diner in Minneapolis 60 years later..
