If I didn’t know the reason, I’d call the people passing my workplace office windows these days quite odd.
Some pass by as usual – until they hit the space below the nearest tree, just a few feet from the door. Then, suddenly, they jump backwards. Some look up, point and shudder, and start patting their head. The teenaged girls shriek. A few days ago, I watched a young mother, towing a few little people, come to an abrupt stop. Shouting to the children to go no further, she rerouted the entire family. One tall long-haired fellow, striding forward, head down, violently flipped his head so far backwards (while his feet continued forward), I feared he might topple.
Odd indeed. But as I said, I know the reason. Bugs.
Cities spray to eliminate them, property owners band their trees to stop them and everybody hates them. So will someone please explain why, outside of bird food, God made cankerworms? The nuisances waft through the air on silk strings, gyrating and wriggling. Resembling mountain climbers in the distance, they rappel to the bottom on their invisible ropes.
Bottom for the cankerworm means a sidewalk, a startled pedestrian, even a parked car. Already engorged with leaves (our tree has almost none left) it creeps forward to devour the next item in nature’s green buffet.
Inchworms, some call them. Others call them loopers. But the crawlies were only quarter-inchworms a few weeks ago, when my co-worker, Judy, and I first noticed the infestation in our city. Hundreds of them, black as sin, they looped along the sidewalk in a narrow phalanx; as though they had a leader that knew the way.
I had no idea what they were at first, so I followed their trail down the street to the first tree, then the second, then the third. Looking closely at the bark on each tree I found their relatives creeping every which way; making themselves at home and looking for dinner. Shuddering, I went back in the office, shutting the door behind me.
A few seconds later I touched my hair and found it moving. “Kathleen…one’s ON you!” Judy shrieked in the same moment. I immediately began what I’ve come to call the Dance of the Cankered. In my case it involved a lot of twisty movement, quite a bit of shouting, a few high screeches, and finally the hasty removal of outer clothing layers to encourage quarter-inchworms to vacate.
The infestations come in several year cycles, I’ve read. The worms become silver moths and the moths lay their eggs at the tops of trees or in the ground. The cycle continues until the population recedes. Not soon enough. Never soon enough.
One day we may hear, from God’s perspective, the whys and wherefores of the pesky worms. But for now I’ll settle for this: they remind me to practice kindness. Because no matter how odd I find someone else’s behavior, facing their exact circumstances, I may behave that way myself. In fact, in this instance, I already did – and I now understand those folks outside my window.
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I love this video…a reminder that everyone’s going through something…Lord, help us remember…