Enjoy the Spotlight While You Can, Woolly Caterpillar

We are approaching that time of the year when an enormous amount of attention is paid to naturally-occurring events that we otherwise would pay no attention to at all.

As the seasons move in turn into the batter’s box and then take their place at home plate it is natural to wonder what kind of firepower each will bring to the game this year, whether they will cheer us or disappoint us or even alarm us, and whether they are up to the billings they’ve been accustomed to in the minor leagues.

So it is with autumn.

While the ancients studied the inside of birds and consulted oracles at their various temples, modern auguries turn their attention in autumn to the warp and woof of everyday natural life.

It isn’t autumn itself they want to know about. It’s what autumn can predict about the winter that follows that counts.

If the farmer sees thicker than normal corn husks, the sight of woodpeckers sharing a tree, the early migration of monarch butterflies, he surmises with the wisdom of centuries behind him that these signs signal that the winter will be a hard one.

It is not limited to the farmer who, after all, may actually know what he is talking about.

There is commonly in autumn an outbreak in the general population of folksiness. A fellow may spend the day in multivariate analysis supporting hedge fund investing strategies, but ask him if he thinks it’s going to be a hard winter and he will go out in the back yard, take a leaf from his tree, and count the number of spots on its underside before he will reply.

This fine woman over here has just exited the operating room where she has knocked off a couple of neurosurgery miracles to start the morning, but open up the discussion to include the topic of snowfall between now and March and she will study the coats of squirrels, the speed and elevation of ducks passing overhead, and the hollowness or otherwise of the last gourds in the garden.

The urban creature becomes rural, the scientist becomes superstitious, the skeptical and the critical become warm and accepting people, at least when it comes to winter harbingers.

No one benefits from this more than the woolly caterpillar, and his or her propensity for crossing the road, or not, as the case may be.

I have forgotten if this propensity, this insane drive, predicts a harsh or a mild winter. The way things go one set of people looking at it will say it means exactly the opposite of what another set of people say or, in the nature of today’s philosophical discourse, say it means both, or neither.

I say nothing against his performance, this woolly caterpillar, his tastes (which run to rotten fruit), the vigor of his romantic inclinations which usually seem to play into these great migrations among the species, his readiness of wit or conviviality.

There is a carping, scolding attitude prevalent today that I don’t much care for, so when I see a woolly caterpillar I only say to myself, ‘there goes a woolly caterpillar,’ and leave it at that.

I only say that it is a lot of attention for merely crossing the road.

This specimen, who on his best day has no more than a minor or supporting role in this great Broadway spectacle called life, suddenly is the star.

He is an unusual star I have to say, not classically handsome by any means, and composed mostly of a few eyes at one end, a furry length of body, and a forward motion most similar to a running back who had been tackled fair and square short of the first down but who seeks to squirm the ball up to a more favorable position on the field when no one is looking.

By some accounts, he can be said to pursue his career with diligence and attention to detail. If you were to say ‘that’s not much of a career, wriggling around all bug-eyed,’ I would say, well, it takes all types in an economy this size.

I just don’t happen to think all that attention is good for the woolly caterpillar.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that there is a red carpet, jostling photographers at one end, a flashbulbs going off before, during, and at the completion of the journey, it is not much of one.

There is likely a website, an email newsletter, podcast, Sunday morning talk show devoted to the topic.

This is rich fare and can lead to errors of judgement. It will seem that now that fame has arrived it will never depart. It will seem to him, the woolly caterpillar proper, that if he wasn’t at the top of his game, then what are all these people doing gazing upon him with wild-eyed or even big-eyed wonder? They must know something, right?

Over the general run of things this kind of focus, while pleasing at the time to the individual, eventually comes around to bite them.

We may consider the case of a young starlet who has been designated the next big thing.

She somehow has stood out in the most recent installment, perhaps #43, perhaps #114, of the latest megaseries of movies devoted to a group of superheroes, and has gone from having the attitude and self-image of a bit player having a bit of fun before she settles down, to an iconic representation of her generation.

At one time she was thrilled to get the casting call at all. Now she sulks in her trailer and demands to speak to the director before she will come out.

She plans to leave the movies behind at her first opportunity she says, and believes that her real home is on Broadway, not to act, mind you, but to direct, or in developing a new teaching method for a new style of acting. An entirely new style of acting. Good God.

Those of us who have been around the block a couple of times will try to pull her aside.

“I would call this a volatile, changeable industry, young lady. Today’s star is tomorrow’s supporting actress, and after that the third lead in the made for TV movie that gets knocked off before the first commercial. This would be a good time to open an IRA, and check into whether your employer has a 401k plan. You just can’t beat it, it’s free money! Contribute the maximum, I say, you’ll be surprised how quickly it piles up. Everyone knows that Social Security is going to be strained by the time you get there. Best to prepare on your own just in case.”

The reader wise to the world will expect little to come from this conversation.

The starlet may listen politely, but her mind is really on the next photo shoot and the interview which follows.

So it is with the woolly caterpillar. They are the creature of the hour, the crème de le crème of the animal kingdom. The proud lion and the noble buffalo step aside and the rhino and giraffe give it up as a lost cause and go smoke cigarettes.

Someone casually concerned about their tactics, “‘um, why not just stay where you are? It is seriously no different over there on the other side of the road. Seriously. And it’s dangerous to cross a busy highway when it takes a day and half to get to the center line.”

Again, nothing about the woolly caterpillar suggests that they will take this advice seriously. They are not reflective by nature, nor open to differing opinions or even the simple back and forth of discourse.

It’s just not there.

I have seen these woolly caterpillars up close, my friend. I know I said I wasn’t going to carp, so let me say just as politely as I can that they are not impressive individuals. 

Between the several eyes, the length of furry body, and the overall tendency to do nothing but squirm, it does not seem to me that there is a lot of room left over for a brain, certainly not a brain of the weather-forecasting variety.

I’d have a more open mind on the matter if I had any confidence that these woolly caterpillars had some sort of generalized forecasting ability.

In those circumstances we would all carry them around in our shirt pockets each time we visited the casino, or sought to make important business decisions. Before proposing to the love of our life we would take them out for a drink and ask their advice.

But I have never heard of such and I just don’t think the evidence is there.

No, what they do is crawl across a road.

So let me understand. We put our full faith and trust on the topic of the severity of the upcoming winter solely on the basis of a squirming piece of matter who, for reasons known only to himself, feels compelled, like the chicken in the joke, to get to the other side?

This is where the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and centuries of the scientific method have led us?

Does it strike no one as funny that we never hear of these creatures except in the dark days of autumn? What do they do the rest of the year? I wish I had a job that required only one stroll across a narrow width of blacktop on one day of the year, at which point I would retire, having given it all a person possibly could.

It makes me wonder if there is an impetuous streak running through the entire woolly caterpillar clan.

You get that in families, this or that character flaw showing up through the generations. It can only be hard on their families, this rash impetuousness. It is painful, but let us give a moment’s thought to  father coming through the door of an evening. Mother is in the kitchen dishing up helpings of rotten fruit, while studious Suzy and happy-go-lucky Chuck, the Caterpillar children, go about their business, all unknowing.

Father Woolly Caterpillar: Pack up our bags, Gladys, we’re leaving.

Mother Woolly Caterpillar: Oh, no, Frank, not again.

Father Woolly Caterpillar: Yes, again. I just feel the urge to move on. I can’t be tied down, woman.

Mother Woolly Caterpillar: Just when we had the place fixed up.

Father Woolly Caterpillar: It’s no matter; we’re all going to move across the road.

Mother Woolly Caterpillar: But where are we going to find nice rotten fruit like we have here? And the kids will suffer if we yank them out of school. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Mother warned me about this, this…this wild streak.

Father Woolly Caterpillar: You knew when you married me that I had a restless spirit.

Mother Woolly Caterpillar: Yes, but I thought you would have settled down by now.

Father Woolly Caterpillar: I can’t settle down, it’s the open road for me. To crawl across of course.

Mother Woolly Caterpillar: Children, you heard your father. Gather up your things, we’re going to squirm across the road. You know how he is when he gets into one of these moods.

We can picture the night going on from there, but not going very well.

So add domestic tyrant to the resume of this creature. Now does he sound like someone we should put our trust in?

Well, then they are off, huge herds of these creatures undulating across the pavement from one side to the other, there, presumably, to take up where they left off on the side of the road they just came from.

It seems a waste. Time-motion studies would reveal that there are a lot of inefficiencies in this process, and all for what?

I cannot even say that I know what these woolly caterpillars turn into, if anything. Woolly mammoths seem a reach, but some sort of butterfly I suppose.

Once they are aloft in the spring it may be that they fly from one side of the road to the other and back again, just to remind them of the old days. Or maybe this is as good as it gets for them, the cluster of eyes at one end, the furry length of body, the incessant squirming, the whole road thing.

I have my doubts that these methods really tell us much about the upcoming winter. I prefer the scientific approach in these matters. There’s this mole, you see, in the back yard, and I could swear that when he digs his trail of holes through my lawn in an eastward facing direction we can put away the woolen long johns and relax, but when he goes westward, you better watch out, boy, it’s gonna be a hard one.

Science has spoken.