A Wooly Worm Wednesday

Do you have wooly worms where you live? In Virginia we do. 

I can't look at or even say the word "wooly worm" without smiling. You have to admit that even if you dislike bugs and insects in general, it's hard to not like them. Wooly worms don't fly around and they don't make a racket at night. They don't bite you, scare you, and they don't get tangled in your hair and cause you to scream or jump. They're fuzzy, unassuming, and non-threatening. I think of them as the Zen of caterpillars. If you mess with them, they curl up and play dead. I don't like being crawled on by anything buggy, but have to admit that I'm okay with letting a wooly worm meander across my hand.

Wooly worms are famous for foretelling the length and severity of the winter season. If they're light-colored, the old folks say, it's supposed to be an easy winter. The darker they are (or the broader the dark section of wooly fuzz) the harsher the winter will be. The other day I saw a black one, and then last week while Carl was painting we saw this one that we "think" was a wooly-worm or its cousin.  But I guess like the two legged weather men, they can't make up their mind either.

 Right now in Virginia, there are a few really warm days left.  When you are driving down the road on those days, you'll see the fuzzy little guys crawling across the pavement in front of you. This time of year wooly worms are always in a big hurry, searching for a warm place to hibernate for the winter. They race across the road at breakneck wooly-worm speed. I have to admit that I sometimes swerve to avoid them. I mean, who wants to run over what I consider the teddy bear of caterpillars? But no matter how fast they go, sadly they're never fast enough and I end up running over my share of them. I think it's kind of sad that these poor, peaceful little creatures, no matter how hard they may try, are no match for my speeding down the road--When you come to think of it, life is kind of that way. You can't outrun it, can't get out of the way of it, and inevitably there are times that no matter how hard you try, you end up run over and flattened by it...On that note, I'll end by saying that I hope you're having a good week, I've been "flattened" a couple of times, but I'm getting across the proverbial road and doing okay...