Moths and buckets

The dog is enormously companionable in so many ways, but the one thing he lacks is conversational talent. This is by no means always a bad thing.

In any case, as his repertoire of wants is simple - eating, walking, running, playing, cat chasing, postie barking, loo going, snoozing - it's never too difficult to decode his desires from his body language. Quizzical eyebrows + attentive rod-backed sitting = walk; big eyes + pacing = garden; wolverine spinal hair raising + head dip = play. And so on. I can read him like a billboard sized optician's chart, and he me: his evening walk-associated time telling is a canine work of genius. Year round, light or dark, his 9pm alarm is set on perma-mode; however distracted I am by whatever it is I'm occupied with, he'll remind me it's time to go.

Canine or human, body language works just fine as a means of communication most of the time. I've always found it easy to understand, and to be understood, in countries where we have no language in common whatsoever. Gesture, posture, expression, tone of voice and a hundred and one other things translate fluently whether you speak English or Arabic. Or as Roo would put it, the universal language of nods, smiles and cigarettes. One might even go so far as to argue that words just get in the way of understanding sometimes.

However, where I do wish the dog would occasionally speak up is when I find myself faced with a dilemma and need someone to ask. Today is a good example. My tiny incumbent army of colourful creeping Lackey Moth caterpillars that arrived en masse a few weeks ago have started to begin the next phase of their life cycle. One by one, and now in increasing numbers each day, they have stopped their leaf-munching festival and have commenced cocoon production.

It's quite fascinating to watch them gradually, methodically, instinctively spin a fine web of silk around themselves. Eventually, after a day of spinning and weaving, what was the caterpillar falls motionless inside a delicate bud of the finest creamy white cotton silk yarn. Only the faintest glimmer of a darker shape inside the inch long cocoons provides the clue that there once was something else. And within a day, that dark burr too has gone. I don't know how long they'll be in their cocoons until the adults emerge, but they've been doing this since the dawn of time so I'm guessing their alarm clock, too, is pretty accurate.

Some of them - perhaps a dozen or two - have chosen to site their cocoons in the edges of the frames around the outside of my front door and windows. I'm happy for the house front to play incubator; and in any event, I'm intrigued to watch them. But here's my dilemma. I'm concerned that when the window cleaner comes, as he's sure to in the next week or so, he'll sweep them away with his bucket and cloth.

Do I hope that, in his general speedy window washing gruffness, he'll just stick to cleaning the glass and leave the frames? Or do I tape a little hand-written note on the window saying... Well, saying what? Please mind the cocoons? Please don't wake the caterpillars? Quiet please - Lackey Moths sleeping overhead? Do not disturb - metamorphosis in action? For this way I fear madness lies. Or at the very least a reputation as the eccentric moth lady at number 3.

That I had even considered discussing this with the dog is probably not a good sign either.



Picture of Lackey Moth caterpillar by Steve Bennett