flowers grown and gifted from my dear friend Mary Evelyn Pritchard
I toe into the woods with my dog in the early morning, stars still studded across the bruise-blue sky. I’m still asleep on my feet, but he’s done that soft whine enough times that I know he needs to go out. As I float hypnagogic between dream and dawn, feeling the gentle tug of the leash as he performs his circle poop ritual, I notice something odd. It sounds like it’s raining – the pitter patter of falling droplets on the leaves and then softer clump of something hitting the detritus of the forest floor. But the air is dry, and the sky is clear. I stand very still.
It's not till a couple days later, still perplexed by the sound, that my friend Mary Evelyn explains the sound is two things coming from the same source: Invasive Spongey Moth caterpillars eating the leaves off of all the trees, dropping little gnawed leaf fragments, and then dropping their own excrement down as well.