Turning on to a path in my favourite urban wilderness, I almost walked directly into this levitating caterpillar. It looks like a box tree caterpillar. Intriguingly the plant it’s hanging from seems to be a box tree that’s growing through a sycamore, with the trunks winding around each other.
I thought they might dangle from threads to evade predators, but apparently the thread is their version of an escalator. It helps them ascend to fresh tasty leaves and catch the breeze to nearby plants once they’ve stripped all the box leaves (or simply made them all curl up and die) from their home.
Imagine if our chosen transportation was to emit a silky thread and catch the next waft of wind! What chance encounters might occur?
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SARA HILLS – WRITER
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Gareth Prior | Poet and compulsive reader
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