crossing the gravel

crossing the gravel

a banded woolly bear meets

a sprouting acorn

          I've been seeing more woolly bear caterpillars with unusual banding this year. Usually the Isabella tiger moth larva have about equal bands of obsidian black on both ends and a copper mid-section. The one above is mostly orange with a black head and just a small patch of black on the hind end, whereas the one below has a long black head and distinct black rear end.

          This is the time of year when these intrepid caterpillars migrate in search of a place to curl up and freeze solid over the winter, surviving by producing a cryoprotectant in their tissues. While cleaning up the yard, I often find them rolled into a fuzzy orange ball under a piece of wood. In the spring they will thaw out, feed for a few months and then pupate into a lovely golden moth with black spots and a fuzzy thorax. The moth has only a few days to mate. What a strange life.

          Even stranger is the case of banded woolly bears who live in the Arctic. There is so little time to feed that the larva have to overwinter many times before pupating, sometimes as long as 14 winters. Imagine, 14 resurrections and then only a few days with wings to find your soul mate.

          I am doing my usual zigzag driving on the highway to avoid the "bears" as they cross in both directions. When I go for a walk along our gravel road, I carefully pick up any I see, their heads covered in limestone dust, and move them to a safe spot in the foliage, in the direction they were headed. I watched one for many minutes as it climbed with great determination through the thatch of grass. It climbed the stem of some plant, got to the top and then took some time, waving its head about, before it climbed back down. What a tiring journey it must be, even with all those legs.

          Today I noticed several small black caterpillars, each clinging to the end of a dry grass stem. When I prodded one, it didn't move. One of them had raised its head and died there, frozen in that position. Strange way to die.

          When I stepped back from examining this curious caterpillar corpse, I looked down and saw a banded woolly bear, curled up. They do this when disturbed. I bent over to pick it up and move it to safety, but then I saw a bit of bright green stuff protruding from its underside. I realized to my horror that I must have stepped on the poor thing. All this time, trying to save them from vehicles and here I killed one with my foot! 

          It may seem strange that I would be upset over killing an insect, but so it is with me. If something comes into my attention, it becomes dear to me, no matter how small. To cause its death, whether unwittingly or accidentally, makes me very sad. 

          Unfathomable are the ways of life and death on Earth.

banded woolly bear

banded woolly bear

searching for a place to hole

up for the winter

My father is raking leaves and my sister and I are jumping into the fragrant piles. In the dry grass I find a woolly bear, steadily making its way across the yard. I pick it up and it curls into a black and orange ball, its fur prickling my palm. When I show it to my father, he tells me the caterpillar is looking for a place to hibernate for the winter, maybe under a log or a rock. He says you can tell how long and cold the winter is going to be by the orange banc on the caterpillar, the thicker the band, the milder the winter. This one has a narrow copper band. "Does that mean we'll have a lot of snow?" I ask hopefully. Then I start to worry that the woolly bear, even with a thick coat, will freeze. My father, a chemist, explains that the caterpillar produces a kind of antifreeze, like the ethylene glycol we put in our car or the propylene glycol they put in ice cream to keep it from forming ice crystals. "Maybe it's dimethyl sulfoxide," he mutters. I know that stuff. That's the liquid he puts on my skin when I get a bruise, claiming it will make it heal faster, but it still takes a long time to turn from purple to yellow. 

          We do have a lot of snow that winter, but it has nothing to do with the width of the woolly bear's band. My father's mixture of fact and fiction was misleading. He was right about the caterpillar producing a cryoprotectant. But perhaps because he wasn't a biologist, he didn't know that hatchlings from the same clutch of eggs, like kittens from the same cat, vary a lot in color, and that the copper band gets wider with age. The banded woolly bear is the larva of the Isabella tiger moth. In the spring the caterpillar emerges from hibernation, devours herbs and forbs, pupates and turns into a lovely golden moth with a furry head. The moth lives through the summer, mates, and the female lays eggs which hatch in the autumn.

          It's October and the woolly bears are migrating. I see them by the dozens, marching slowly but steadily across the highway. They always go straight across, but in both directions. I drive slowly, my eyes straining to see the tiny black caterpillars against the dark pavement. When I spot one, I swerve to miss it, making sure there's no one behind me who might wonder what's wrong with me. Today, when I stop at the mail box, I see one crossing the concrete apron before the bridge and I run back to take its picture. Before I can reach down to pick up the woolly bear and deposit it in the grass, a big truck comes down the hill, so I jump back to the shoulder. After it passes, I walk back out to rescue the caterpillar, but alas, it has been smashed flat by the wheels of the truck, its green blood spewed across the concrete.

          I feel terrible because I took its picture instead of rescuing it first. I try to console myself by recalling the story about the saint and the dead cat. A mischievous man decides to test the reputed equanimity of the saint. He invites the saint to his house for a meal, then leads him by the most unpleasant path. They come upon a cat that has been overtaken by a bus. The mischievous man says, "Oh, how horrible!" But the saint says, "See, what pearly white teeth."