Originally published August 22, 2023.
’s post on tussock moths reminded me I wrote this, so I wanted to revisit it.A section of essays in Bernd Heinrich’s A Naturalist At Large is titled “Insects.” Its first piece, “Reading Tree Leaves,” is about caterpillars.
Essays are my favorite genre of writing. Every so often an essay makes you pause, wowed. Sign of a skilled essayist. Heinrich, Berry, Didion, Solnit, Sontag, Woolf, Wallace.1
Heinrich explains:
Experiments and observations with birds show, surprisingly, that they may, as I had myself when caterpillar hunting, cue in on leaf damage to locate caterpillars that may otherwise be nearly invisible because of their excellent mimicry of inedible objects, such as bark, twigs, and even parts of the leaf.
Is that how a Yellow-billed Cuckoo locates caterpillars? They eat hairy tent caterpillars, which most birds pass up. “A ravenous cuckoo was documented downing 47 of these larvae in six minutes.”
Has a white-marked tussock moth caterpillar ever met its end because of a trail of leaf damage? I hoped so, had a grudge.
Late summer years ago I ended up with a rash all over my neck and upper back. Caterpillars fell down my shirt as I reached up to cut back vegetation they were in.
Tussock moth caterpillars have urticating hairs. Amateur Entomologists’ Society explains these hairs have “barbs which cause the hair to work its way into the skin.” When my rash was at its worst, I determined the culprits had been white-marked tussock moth caterpillars. The rash they give you is itchy, but “the inflammation isn’t dangerous, and this species is not venomous.”
White-marked tussock moth caterpillars are “distinctive in their markings and coloration, [though] other tussocks may be mistaken for them or vice versa.” Had I been wrong? Had they been definite tussock moth caterpillars, not white-marked?
But “definite tussock moth caterpillars are definitely yellow.” They “prefer willow but may also be found on oak, maple, hackberry, and birch.” Looking at pictures of definite tussock moth caterpillars they’re yellower than I remember, and white-marked can be found in pretty much any deciduous or coniferous tree.
Explained by
, they “may be found feeding on an extremely wide variety of trees, both deciduous and coniferous, including apple, birch, black locust, cherry, elm, fir, hackberry, hemlock, hickory, larch, oak, rose, spruce, chestnut, and willow.”I’ve been cultivating an interest in insects. There is so much to learn. Writings from the likes of
are useful resources and reinforce just how much there is to know.The foundational knowledge I started with is surface-level from fly fishing. Caddises, mayflies, midges, stoneflies, blue-winged olives, terrestrials.
I once enjoyed a memoir by an entomologist. Excellent book I’m quick to loan out. One borrower bought their own copy. Being a memoir, it’s about more than bugs.
The author writes that an obscure entomology book he has feels as if it justifies his existence. That’s the feeling I’m looking for with this next area of interest, one I already have with birds.
Butterflies make it easy. Gateway to dragonflies, to bees. Moths, beetles, ants. People know I like birds, point them out to me or send me pictures with ID questions. No butterfly or fern pictures yet, but people point them out to me now.
When I first published this in 2023, I’d been stung by a bee. A few days before that sting, I’d crossed paths with some bald-faced hornets. They can be aggressive.
Now I’ve been semi-recently stung by a bee through my pants. I already knew they could sting through clothes—they “can and will”—but I wasn’t being properly cautious. Thick, baggy clothes help prevent getting stung through them.
There is always more to learn; I want to learn whatever I can. Knowledge will not prevent bees, wasps, or rashes, but it’s good to learn and pass on what you know. On more than one occasion I’ve explained urticating hairs when warning people about the rash a tussock moth caterpillar can give you.
Maybe I’d have preferred learning about urticating hairs in a less direct way, but I look back on that rash with a tinge of fondness. I was certainly not fond at the time, but learning is a good thing—even when it itches.
There is a lot to say about David Foster Wallace, good and bad. An essay on LitHub opens: “David Foster Wallace’s work has long been celebrated for audaciously reorienting fiction toward empathy, sincerity, and human connection.” It continues, he “spoke and wrote movingly about our need to cultivate self-awareness in order to more fully see and respect others, and created formal methods that construct the reader-writer relationship with such piercing intimacy that his fans and critics feel they know and love him.”
He wasn’t perfect. Next paragraph we read about his and Mary Karr’s “brief romantic relationship that ended in vicious arguments and ‘his pitching my coffee table at me.’” When asked if he was a misogynist, scholar Clare Hayes-Brady said in an interview: “Yes, is the short answer. But I don’t know anyone who’s not a misogynist, and I’m including myself.” In her book, The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace, she doesn’t ignore his misogyny but “also believes he’s the greatest writer of his generation.” It’d be wrong to purely adulate him, as I did ages 21-26. Unabashedly, I was one of those fans that felt I knew and loved him.
Understanding Wallace, like understanding any of us, is not straightforward. He took his own life in 2008, aged 46. Afterward, his wife Karen Green was visited by writer and birder Jonathan Franzen. (The Corrections, Freedom, his essay, “My Bird Problem.”) His visit was before he went to “a forbiddingly vertical volcanic island.” Called Alejandro Selkirk, it is “seven miles long and four miles wide…populated by millions of seabirds and thousands of fur seals but is devoid of people.” Alexander Selkirk is the man who might’ve inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Locals still use the island’s original name: Masafuera (Farther Away). Green gives Franzen a matchbox of Wallace’s ashes to scatter there, “she liked the thought of part of David coming to rest on a remote and uninhabited island.”
It is possible to laud Wallace’s writing without lauding Wallace. As put here, “you can separate the art from the artist.” A criticism of Wallace is not a criticism of his work; adulation of Wallace’s work is not adulation of Wallace. Reading his doorstop Infinite Jest in my early 20s was a formative experience. Is “reorienting fiction toward empathy, sincerity, and human connection” not a good thing? Despite a writer’s personal failings?
Writing about Wallace in a footnote is an act of homage. He is, per a different LitHub essay, the “reigning champion of footnotes.” A footnote’s space limitations keep me from going on; I’ve already gone long enough.
Some of Wallace’s essays: “Shipping Out,” “Consider the Lobster,” “Laughing with Kafka,” “Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes,” “Ticket To The Fair.”
James, a fascinating read on caterpillars and butterflies. Thank you for the enlightening read.
Fascinating article James. It is interesting that I can see a caterpillar and sometimes forget that they will eventually transform into a butterfly. This is one area of Nature that I do not have much knowledge at all and it is interesting to learn new identifications and traits of insects. On a related note, we have reports on ebird of Yellow-billed Cuckoos up here in Ottawa Canada - a rarity for the area. Thanks for sharing.