Last night, as we pulled into our parking space after a successful CD-trading venture (One of our finds was the lovely Extra Golden), something writhed in the headlights. A very yellow something, or rather, group of somethings. We got out to inspect. It was a handful of caterpillars, anywhere from two to four inches long, with big red spikes on their business ends. Their legs rotated like joysticks and took them zooming around the parking space at an alarming rate. We inspected them like the vaguely interested urbanites we are, and then retreated into the house, happy with our impromptu evening zoology and equally happy to abandon it.

Caterpillars are interesting when they are few in number. When they reveal their intent to take over, that’s another situation altogether. This morning I found that the few scouts of the previous night had given way to a huge migratory wave coming off the mountain behind our house. It was as if someone had centrifuged yellow paint across every road and sidewalk, except that most of the paint splatters moved, quite swiftly. My internet research tells me that every few years they come in such numbers that their flattened bodies cause road closures due to the slick. This brood seems a little more localized– At the pottery studio, which is in a similarly undeveloped area but several miles north, there wasn’t a single yellow squirmer to be seen. This afternoon on my return, I found them mostly ground into the roads but still determinedly clinging to the walls of the condo and the screen door. They squirmed and fell with loud plops as I hurriedly turned the key and swung it open. It was a close call– there were a few on the ground that had poked their noses over the threshold. I begged them not to come in the house.

Here’s a good picture of one from http://www.calflora.net/wildplaces/index.html

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They are the larva of the White-lined Sphinx moth, which sometimes tricks people into thinking it’s a hummingbird. F-f-f fascinating, I’m sure. Imagine being about its size, when it rears up with its red horn and simultaneously oozes green stuff from its mouth. That would be scary.