butterfly decline tagged posts

Saving the Caterpillars

I have taken to spotting the sudden August profusion of caterpillars making their way across the park path before the sun makes it over the trees. Danger is everywhere, a veritable Omaha Beach, but with unwitting enemies. A steady fusillade of pedestrians, drivers and cyclists go about their morning through the park, unknowingly poised to crush the hapless creatures in but one more episode of natural, deadly roulette. Deliberating hardly at all in my mission of mercy, I begin scooping up first one, then another and another caterpillar and depositing them on the grass three feet and an eternity away, abutting the forested hillside. Then I turn back to espy two more, just a few feet ahead as an SUV turns in from the street coming at us...

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