May 31: Action caterpillar

The road through the woods where I walk the dogs is a one-track dirt road, and in most places the trees branches reach out from the two sides of the road, touching each other and forming a cathedral-like arch tunnel. Today, in the middle of the road, we passed a fat caterpillar suspended in midair from an invisible thread. Since the branches above are so high up, his thread must have been incredibly long.

He was just over an inch long and thicker than a drinking straw, bright green with four tiny sucker feet on one end and two that I could see on the other. Very cute, and the miniature nature of his aerial feat made me chuckle. In relative size, if it had been a human descending from a cord, it would have been a scene from an action movie or an adventure program -- but for the caterpillar, it's just everyday life. Which is actually amazing, and kind of noble.

I wonder which kinds of creatures would chuckle at us humans?