Paying Attention

While lying on the dismal oatmeal-grey carpet, I glimpsed a bit of orange and saw it was a moth. A tiny, tiny orange moth! With lacy wings! Unique! I scooped up the body with a sheet of white paper and marveled. Then I attached my macro lens to my phone and photographed close-ups. What a magnificent work of art: red, orange, and bridal white. For scale, the wooden item you see in the photo below isn't the tip of a chopstick; it's the tip of a round toothpick.

The Design is Perfect

All I found was one moth wing. I carried it into the house and folded it into a piece of paper until I had time to study it. Its owner was a Cecropia moth. I especially loved the transparent porthole "lens" in the center of the wing's "eye" that prevented the wing from being a total blind spot and was designed to look to some predatory creature like a hungry snake's or owl's eye. Here you see the wing's obverse and reverse.

Cecropia moths live only to reproduce. They don't eat; they don't have mouth parts. They live two weeks. I would like to know and feel what its life was like. Is it possible that we who are much more complicated creatures do know or can know? Could I ever articulate it?

The wing is furred, colorful, beautifully shaped, functional, and despite its delicacy isn't fragile because it survived its owner and two weeks out on the porch. I'm so glad I found it. It's a reminder that nature's design, behind it all, is perfect. We simply have a blind spot about our own perfection.

Why Caterpillars Infest Your House

The army worms or tent caterpillars of May 19 had dispersed in the morning but returned to my house at night, this time to the kitchen. They crept up walls and cabinets, through the red-pepper barrier beneath the door, and squashing them left and right I thought I'd go mad, using up paper towels and tissues, finally bringing out the vacuum, harassed, disgusted. Worse than ants. There is nothing in this house for caterpillars to eat, no plants, no breadcrumbs.

But there were none in the guest room although last night they were there by the hundreds; only in the kitchen. Their doors are only a few feet apart. Why were they choosing only the kitchen this evening? (Want to see them crawl? Video, 35 seconds.)

Answer: Light. The guest room was dark tonight but the kitchen was lit. Army worms are caterpillars, soon to become moths, and moths are attracted by light. It must be that caterpillars are, also.

I shut off the kitchen light. Their numbers diminished. I doused all lights in the house but one. Their numbers diminished.

Searching the Net (briefly, because in a minute I'm going to bed and turning out all the lights) I couldn't find this conclusion anywhere else but in a book published in 1896 by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture. But I'm telling you: Caterpillars invading your house at night? Shut off the lights!