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Beware the Trees of Suburbia!

Does anyone else see the rapelling stealth caterpillars hanging from the trees, or have I simply stumbled upon a covert operation lying in wait for me alone?

I’ll be walking along a tree-lined street when BAM! – a small pale-green caterpillar is staring me down from his invisible silken line attached to an overhead branch, I swear hanging on by one foot so he can stretch out all other feet towards me in the hopes of latching on and – I don’t know – using me as an unsuspecting mode of transportation for a block or two, until which time he’ll leap from my back using a home-made invisible silken parachute to glide onto his next victim?

I look like I’m having some sort of balance confrontation when I see these guys – walking along in a relatively straight line until suddenly my head rears back and I lean sharply to my left (I don’t know why I don’t lean to my right. It’s a thing.) to avoid the dangling potential parasite because my momentum is carrying me right into his trap and it’s too late to stop outright. My upper body completes a last-minute semi-circle of evasion as I proceed forward and then check behind me to make sure the caterpillar has remained on his thread and not managed to clutch onto me.

Who knows how many of these caterpillars I haven’t seen – and where are they now? My bookbag? My apartment? Trying to hot-wire my RAV4? It’s the unknown that worries me the most.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hah, stumbled across your blog, not stumbled like there was roadkill and I accidentally tripped on it, but like stumbled as in I tripped on a rock and landed in a field of flowers made of...kittens? Yeah, fun blog, glad I found it, keep it up!

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