Getting the Good Creepy Crawlies

When I was growing up in southern Louisiana, one morning each spring, I would wake up to find the front yard writhing under a mass of dark grey, fuzzy-looking caterpillars.

I don’t think it’s the same way any more, which is a bit of a curse in disguise. But when I was a kid, it was an absolute infestation.

When I was very young, I was not a fan. My Dad would encourage me to be his brave little girl and walk out towards him and instead I’d stand at the doorway wailing, imagining the caterpillar bodies crushed and oozing out from under the soles of my Mary Janes until he’d sigh, walk back, and pick me up. I didn’t mind it so much, if he crushed them.

Later, though, I got curious about these creatures that appeared so suddenly, could transform an ordinary sidewalk into a moving sidewalk, and then disappear with equal suddenness just a few weeks later. I started watching them, even touching them.

The problem with caterpillars is that they *look* fuzzy. I mean, they looked for all the world like all my favorite animals when I was five or seven or ten: red pandas. Those sheep in northern countries that peer out from behind a mop someone has tossed haphazardly onto their heads. Lassie dogs and enormous, listless cats. Basically, my favorites were always those animals that, in both form and function, come as close as possible to lightly animated throw blankets.

And caterpillars look like that. But they are not that. They are often poisonous, painful little things, with daggers where their fur should be. You can try to pet a caterpillar, but it’s unwise: the best you can accomplish is usually to pat them, just straight up and down, so that the barbs wouldn’t catch you coming or going.

Now, there was a girl in our neighborhood who was mentally disabled, and I’ve forgotten how this worked, exactly, but I remember that the other kids in the neighborhood were encouraged to play with her, at least occasionally. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends myself at the time, so after I got over my grievance of not being left alone to read, I was generally more-or-less OK with this.

Once when she came over, it was caterpillar season, and I explained to her the thing about fuzzy caterpillars: they look like red pandas and sheep and throw blankets and so on, but they’re actually kind of evil, and you have to be careful with them. I told her the whole thing about petting them — you pat them up and down, not rubbing them — but she forgot or didn’t listen and somehow, I’m not sure how, she put her whole knee down on one and the insides oozed out and you could see, when she lifted up her knee, the imprint of poison left there, like some extended puffy snowman raised in a pale relief on her leg. She was shrieking, my parents must have come out to find out what was going on. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember her parents, their fury, and I never did see the girl again. I think they thought I did it on purpose.

I’m sure they had good reason to be sensitive to that, kids playing with their daughter only to set her up somehow, or harm her in some way. Probably those kids made exactly the same kinds of claims I did — “Oh, no, Mr. and Ms. Smith, I never thought the caterpillars would harm her. I play with them all the time.”

As an adult, now, looking back, I can imagine exactly how smarmy it must have sounded, how fake. How often do little girls spend hours playing with poisonous insects?

But I did, up until that moment. The terror of my friend’s fear, though, and her parents’ fear, and my parents’ fear — that all knocked it out of me. I didn’t think about insects again until recently, when I was in a locust storm in northern Kenya and was so focused on photographing elephants, I couldn’t see the wildlife phenomenon that was all around me, that was literally knocking itself into me, getting itself tangled in my hair. I’ll write about this more, probably over and over, but when I finally realized what had happened — that I had missed seeing what was right in front of me because I had stopped really seeing insects — the fact of it about knocked the wind out of me.

About a week and a half ago, I was in Shenandoah National Park, in what’s called the Big Meadow, and was surprised to discover that it was absolutely chock-a-block with grasshoppers. I mean, they were everywhere — hoping, eating, and mating.

Well, you don’t need to tell me to pay attention twice. I got out my camera and, even though I hadn’t brought any micro photography filters for my camera, I did manage to get a few pictures that I’m happy with using a 300 mm lens.

As I try to nudge my way back into thinking about insects again, I also find myself thinking about my old friend: I hope she’s doing OK, wherever she is, and that she too is finding a way to explore her world and take pleasure in all the richness — some of it pleasant, some less so, much of it surprising — that it has to offer.

I’d love to hear if you’ve ever gotten really into watching insects before, or if there’s ever been anything that you’ve missed with your camera that you’ve really regretted.

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