Talk Thursday (on Wednesday): Caterpillars

My parents fly into town today, and who knows how much time I'll have to do anything over the next few days. So, let's blog. The topic du jour is caterpillars. I think I'm supposed to call to mind the little fuzzy guys that start crawling up my oak tree at this time of year, soon to make little cocoons and emerge later as nifty-looking butterflies and pepper moths. (I love pepper moths. There's no two alike, just like snowflakes.) More moths than butterflies, at least around here, but some very creative moths we have in Dallas. The trouble with moths, though, is that they tend to fly into the house by accident because they're congregating around the outside light, and then you open the door, which is right by the outside light, and they zoom in with you, and presto! They're cat toys. Caesar likes nothing better than to chase moths. Chloe will yell at them if they're out of reach, which is pretty funny, actually.

But the kind of caterpillar I generally think of looks like this:

Mainly that's because I live in Dallas, where despite the recession and talk of no government funds, some road or another is always getting torn up for repairs. Right now it's the 635 all the way from the I35 interchange to the 75 by my office. I usually come up from downtown and miss most of the fun, but I can see it out most of the office windows and let me tell you, it is not pretty. If you gotta drive in North Dallas, you'd do well to take the surface streets.

Then there's this kind of caterpillar, which tends to show up at my idiot neighbor's house. Have I mentioned my idiot neighbor lately? This little guy showed up to dig a big hole in his back yard, while I watched (and secretly videotaped, in case he's a serial killer and he was digging an underground bunker to hide the bodies.) It turned out to be for a below-ground swimming pool, of the sort that requires proper drainage, a four-foot locking fence, and a city permit. None of which he bothered with. Did I mention he's an idiot? I should have figured he didn't have the smarts to be a serial killer. At least not for long. (Course, if I disappear after writing this blog post, check under the pool.)

Now, really, I should not be complaining about construction. After all, it brings jobs. (You know, those things that the Republicans were so excited about for five minutes, before somebody mentioned birth control.) And it doesn't affect me all that much, because I can drive around it (some people can't) or go through it at times of day when it's less likely to be jammed with angry motorists (and Caterpillars). But there are days when I'd like to look out my office window (or somebody else's office window; my office doesn't have a window) and just watch our resident hawk zoom around, instead of the big yellow trucks moving back and forth. I'm just sayin'.