You might recall that we had a late burst of Indian Summer in November and early December last year here in Eastern Massachusetts, and it helped cause a massive population explosion of winter moths. For a couple of weeks, the back porch light here at the Fortress of Solitude was like a homing beacon for hundreds of little brown moths, and we were informed that the number of moths in Massachusetts probably measured into the trillions.
Fast forward to our early spring and the warm weather we’ve been having since the monsoons ended. Guess what…all those moths used that little warm spell then to get their freak on, and we are about to be inundated with their progeny: inchworms. Yes, those little teeny green caterpillars are the larval stage of the geometridae species of moth. They’re also sometimes called “green loopers” because of the way their midsections loop up when they walk. There’s only one cycle of larvae each year, so all the inchworms will appear within the next few weeks, eat everything in sight, and then go off to pupate sometime in mid-summer, emerging as moths in the fall.
I was reminded of all this the other day when I came across a video of an inchworm someone found on their backpack while riding a bus; after filming it crawling on his bag, the fellow takes the bag to a park and sets the inchworm free on a leaf. The whole video is set to the song “Inchworm” as sung by Danny Kaye in the musical film “Hans Christian Anderson”, which has always been a favorite tune of mine. Here’s Danny Kaye and the Muppets singing “Inchworm” on “The Muppet Show”:
As much as I love that song, I didn’t realize how much of a pest inchworms were, so I may have to reconsider just how beautiful they are.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
