The very hungry caterpillars

Poor Mr SDS.  I don’t know how to contain my excitement sometimes but I have to tell someone, and inevitably it’s him.  I run into the house, eyes gleaming, and exclaim:

“I’ve just seen two slugs mating!”

“A massive hornet flew right past me and I felt it brush against my arm!”

“I was sitting on the bench and a cockchafer landed on my knee!”

“I found a sexton beetle in the compost bin!”

“I actually saw a spider take a shit just now!  Really!”

Etc.

There’s not a lot he can say, I know, because he doesn’t share my level of enthusiasm for creepy, crawly, slimy or flying, multi-legged, freaky-looking minibeasts and some of the weird and wonderful things that they do.

Here’s the latest.

Hundreds of newly-hatched ermine moth (I think) caterpillars that have created a web-like silk structure on some nettles in the garden and are now eating their way through the leaves: a stripey, writhing, wriggling, suspended, living mass.  I was fascinated and mesmerised by these tiny lifeforms that I noticed today, plus the fact that I’ve never seen so many caterpillars in one place.  I just wish I had someone to share it with who’d be even a fraction as interested in it as I am. 

So I put it on my blog.  Poor you.