Wooly Bears

 I knew when I started this blog that not everyone would be a fan of every post. I have made my peace with that. Isn't that the way with any kind of creative endeavor? I used to have this argument with my Dad, who was a classical oboe player for his whole career. If I happened to be playing some of my music out loud and he came back to the house, he would exclaim, "What is this noise?". Of course, to me, the Pink Floyd or Talking Heads music coming out of the speakers sounded great, if not sublime. My arguments with him about the subjectivity of art never went anywhere. Heck, I'm just happy that anyone is reading my work in the first place. I welcome your feedback and I know that my style is just that - mine. And sometimes I go dark. I get into that mode where I can envision things going terribly, horribly wrong. And sometimes those are really fun pieces to write and I can't explain why. Anyway, I hope this latest feels a little lighter and gives you a sense that you won't be able to pigeonhole me as one particular type of writer. I'm having fun. I'm still experimenting. Still finding my voice. And you are along on this journey with me.  Thanks for sitting shotgun.

Wooly Bears

 

  Caterpillar stage 

  

 Isabella Tiger Moth

 

Like most Vermonters, I can become obsessed with the weather. I like to do things outdoors, so this only makes sense.It’s natural for us, given the fact that we have all four seasons in each of their distinct patterns. Some would proudly add our fifth season (mud). Many a war story has been told of braving a particular dirt road in late March or early April. How the ruts were so deep and it took no small amount of skill to maneuver through them. But that’s probably for another story. Starting towards the end of September, one of our best, and maybe most controversial, weather predictors start showing up.


I’ll be riding my bike down a quiet stretch of dirt road with someone and we’ll glance down and exclaim, “A wooly bear!” And sure enough, there it is. A small brown and black caterpillar making its way across the road. They are quite “wooly” and if you pick one up, you’ll quickly learn that and will observe it curl reflexively into a tight little ball. Wouldn’t you do the same if some giant scooped you up into its hands while you were just making your merry way along, minding your own business?


The scientific name for these little guys is Pyrrharctia Isabella and they are destined to become the Isabella Tiger moth. There is a lot of interesting information about wooly bears (or what some call wooly worms, which doesn’t sound nearly as cuddly) to be had on their Wikipedia page. In general, they have a pretty short life span, so we should be kind to these fellow Earth citizens when we come across them making their trek across our quiet back roads. They generally live for only 2-3 weeks in their larval stage (the fuzzy brown and black that we are used to). Once they have fed enough, they will pupate and eventually turn into moths that live a very short 24 hours, during which time they lay their eggs to start the cycle all over again. There is a version of this caterpillar found in the Arctic and they live in slow motion, extending out their life span for up to 14 years!


It’s interesting that we want to ascribe weather predicting capabilities to these little denizens of the U.S. and southern Canada. Sometimes, the caterpillar stage will winter over, completely freezing solid and staving off death by the use of essentially what is a natural antifreeze that can protect them to 90 degrees below zero (Farenheit). Then, in the Spring, when things warm up, they thaw out and go about their business, which is basically to reproduce themselves. So, they miss the entire winter that they are supposedly able to predict. They are in a blissful state (I hope it’s blissful) where they lie there in the grass and weeds frozen solid, unaware of all our scurrying around, plowing snow, getting stuck on icy, rutted roads, shivering by the fire and inventing new sports to keep us occupied until the sun gets a little closer and we can warm up again.


The lore is that the relative amount of brown and black on the caterpillar predicts the harshness of our winter. More black equals a harsher winter. There is even finer detail about whether the black is bigger at their front or the rear (harsher early winter if it is towards the front) and also that the caterpillars' 13 segments correspond to the typical 13 weeks of winter (more about all that can be found here). I’m conveniently ignoring the actual science around the wooly bear’s weather prediction capability.


There is another aspect of their weather prediction I hadn’t heard of before and that is if they are seen crawling south, then it is going to be a colder winter. I don’t know, maybe they think they’re going to make it to South Carolina or Florida, but that will be a long journey. I didn’t find any data on how fast they can crawl. My engineering brain wants to calculate that so I’ll have to throw a tape measure into my bicycle saddle bag for future research. My own observations are that they go faster when it is warmer. Their maximum velocity seems to be on those lucky fall days where we hit 70 degrees in October. It’s like a last gasp for these little guys. Maybe they want to just get to the last of the leaves and eat enough to pupate so they don’t have to do the whole freezing solid thing.


Some parts of the country have various wooly bear festivals and I think that’s great. Any excuse to get the community together, enjoy some food and drink (likely pumpkin spiced something or other) and to have some fun. If we do it over a wooly bear, I’m OK with that.


It’s funny that with all of today’s modern technology: satellites that track our weather, complex computer models that predict storms,and phone apps that can forecast when it is going to rain or snow down to the minute (my daughter’s phone will give her a message like, “light rain starting in 10 minutes”), I still can’t help but get excited to check out any wooly bear when it crosses my path and wonder what kind of winter he is predicting. Hey, was that last one heading south?