Is it just me - or is this just too weird..?
So, after enjoying a half-strength soy latte and a huge chocolate muffin (couldn’t decide to be healthy or not today) I said goodbye to my friends and headed off to the car park….
….I didn’t expect to trip over a super-long, hairy worm on the way….
On further inspection, it turned out to be about 300 caterpillars!
OK, maybe not 300, but it was a lot… and it was really creepy. It even made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I shuddered slightly.
It wasn’t long before I had enticed a few other people over to prod the hairy little wrigglers… and of course, find out what the hell they were.
“Processionary Caterpillars” – apparently, so I was told – and as the name suggests they follow each other from nose to tail in a line while they move along in a procession to find Wattle trees, etc to devour. They can also cause skin irritations to humans – not that I had any inclination to pat them… not everything hairy is cute.
So there you go, what a phenomenon – not something I was expecting to blog about today.. tune in next week to find out how to eat them…
… Yuk, I’m kidding.
Hi Vicky,
My partner and I saw them today for the first time, in country N.S.W. There were only 31 in the procession that we came across. Never seen anyhting like them before.
One of them, in the middle, seemed to get lost once they hit the scrub on the side of the road, I was going to pick him up, must have been a boy, us females dont get lost, 😉 , glad I didnt, after reading the info about them.