06.11.08
The Existential Caterpillar
If you read my About Me, you’ll see that I’m a horrible gardener. Doesn’t mean I don’t try, but I readily admit that if it wasn’t for Scott, everything in our little plot of herbs would shrivel and die. An example of my gardening prowess:
About a week ago, I went outside to get mint for my coffee and found about 20 blue and yellow striped
caterpillars gnawing away at the dill and the fennel. I immediately panic, decide that they’re poisonous maneaters, and run to Scott for help. He picks each off with a pair of tongs and kills them, while I try not to cry. Sure, they were going to attack me with their deadly mandibles (and certainly decimate the dill which I’m still not sure is going to recover), but I felt responsible for their untimely demise. But bugs must die in a garden, right? I would be stoic.
I did research. Bad idea. They were black swallowtail butterflies and only poisonous if you eat them, i.e. not dangerous to me. Apparently some people plant extra dill and fennel in order to attract these beauties. Then I felt extra guilty. I explain this to Scott in a remorseful email. He reminds me that they were massacring the dill and making headway against the fennel. I feel somewhat mollified.
The next day, there were three more fennel assassins. Scott and I argue. I win out with the argument, “It isn’t like we’re eating the fennel. Might as well let someone enjoy it.” And so the green and blue garden ninjas breathed another day.
Caterpillars breathe, right?
Today I went to check out the uninvited neighbors and see how they were doing. One was absolutely enormous, like the size of my little finger. I watered the plants, and apparently this irritated him, so he raised his little black head and neon orange antennae pop out. Clearly he had an announcement of epic proportions, so I knelt down for better communication and he bobbed and weaved while grinding his mandibles at me, then wagged his long body over the leaf-barren branch that he’d eaten his way across.
I understood. The food had run out on his stem, and this corpulent prince of the fronds needed more. I’d already aligned myself with the caterpillar killers against the garden, and felt my allegiance must stick. I carefully selected another branch, one loaded with ferny-goodness (and closer to kicking out than some of the central shoots – I may be a traitor to the garden, but I could do the fennel that little favor at least), and I thrust it at the prince. After another neon eruption, he accepted the offering, and waddled his way over, immediately sinking the new branch beneath his substantial weight. Another panicked bob and scuttle, then he settled in, crunching happily away at his new breakfast, again content with his lot in life.
I know it is the nature of all creatures who make it big to forget the ones that helped them along the way, so I’ll try to forgive my new friend if he neglects to return and grace me with his black-winged presence. I’m not sure the fennel will be as forgiving.