Get You a Man Who Can Do Moth
Out One Day: Caterpillar of the Community
By Paul Oswell
Spring in New Orleans is a time to live with gusto. Look, it’s not like we as a city undergo the trials of long, harsh winters. Sure, there might be a few unwelcome days in January when we have to drip our taps to avoid freezing our exposed pipes, or spend the odd weekend huddled up in quilts that have been lying dormant in the furthest reaches of our closets. Living in the near-tropics, though, we don’t have the ordeal of the months-long assault of sleet and snow that our northern cousins annually endure.
The summer months, by contrast, are very much ours to complain about, annually discussed in wary, Game of Thronesian terms as May and June approach. Air conditioning units are reluctantly powered up and the humidity approaches with relentless inevitability. What is damp may never dry…you know the mantras. For a few weeks in and around April and May, though, the city is our panoramic playground, when we can galavant freely with a cursory application of sunscreen, and a single shower a day is more than sufficient. Festivals abound, windows are opened with alacrity and a carefree, vernal freedom reigns.
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I awoke one late morning to a cinematically pleasant day. We had a shared afternoon off, and had planned to go to the movies. “We’re not doing that,” she said. “It would be a disgusting waste of this perfect weather.” I didn’t need too much persuading and I was summarily dispatched to the store to buy picnic supplies...cheeses, wine, fresh bread and all the dips we could snort.
Arriving at City Park, it was clear that a lot of people had co-opted our completely original idea; blankets spread with abandon, music speakers blared, and even the odd frisbee was dusted off for that year’s first taste of freedom. We found a spot under the shade of a tree and ate and drank and basked with a glow in the idyllic scene. There was an infectious jollity permeating the park, collective anxieties evaporating in the breeze-tinged sunshine.
I remember it being a lovely time - people that we knew passed by and said hello, and we’d both drunk enough wine to find almost all of my jokes and observations funny. As the afternoon passed and the sky began to bruise, her evening work obligations hoved into view. She was working a shift at a dive bar, so a level of jovial tipsiness was practically expected.
We started to pack away our trash and backpacks, and it’s at this point that things changed very much for the worst. As we’d been lying there, the branches of the trees had delivered a surprise gift alongside the welcome shade. At some point, a lone caterpillar had fallen from the tree and got caught in the fabric of my shirt under my armpit. We stood up, ready to leave, and as I slung my backpack over my shoulder, I clamped my arm down to tighten the straps.
Reader, have you ever been overcome with an almost unbearably- intense pain that you’re simultaneously completely mystified as to where it’s coming from?
I was fairly sure that I wasn’t a target for any would-be assassins, and it didn’t feel as though any internal organs were revolting against me, but it did suddenly feel like red hot needles were being violently jabbed into my side. I’m not sure what kind of noises I was making, but my girlfriend later said that she’d never really heard anything like them before.
As I slowly peeled my arm away from my side, tears streaming down my reddening face, a slightly squashed and indignant-looking Buck Moth caterpillar wormed its way slowly free of the material it had attached itself to and fell to the floor. For those of you who have yet to have the pleasure, these spike-laden larvae are not only happy to jam their spines into you if they feel it necessary, but they also then deliver a venomous lagniappe of eye-poppingly painful poison, just for good measure.
Not only had this wriggly demon rather unsportingly attached itself to me, I had then UNDER MY OWN VOLITION jammed it aggressively into the soft, exposed skin of my own underarm with no small amount of force. If you’re in any doubt about the upshot of this whole sorry situation, let me be clear: it kind of smarted, I won’t lie.
As I concentrated on being a gibbering wreck for a while, writhing in agony on the grass while my girlfriend looked up the nearest pharmacies on her phone. She had no choice but to leave for her imminent shift (I was too shocked to summon up any judgment) but she found one, and pointed me in the right direction. I can’t remember getting there too well, but the journey (on foot) to a CVS lasted around four or five days, I think.
In the dim but oh so welcome neon glow of a multinational pharmacological retailer, I lumbered up to the prescription window and begged the assistant to get me the strongest pain-killing ointment available to humanity as soon as possible, or preferably an impromptu skin graft, if that’s a procedure that she was able to administer on site.
A tube of some kind of antiseptic balm was duly handed over. The cash registers seemed impossibly far away and so I just broke it open in the aisle, ripping off my shirt and maniacally slathering it on the stings. I’m sure a security video of this exists somewhere, but I hope it has long been taped over, or at least won’t come back to humiliate me should I ever achieve anything of note, as reassuringly unlikely as that might be, of course.
The cream was impressively fast acting, at least taking the edge off within a few seconds. I lined up to pay, shirtless, speechless and sweaty, salt tears lingering in my eyes. The young couple in front of me looked at me, smiling. At first I wondered why, but then the guy said to me quietly, “Hey man, I’m sure you’re not a cop.” Full marks for analysis. “We’ve been at Jazz Fest all weekend and we’re heading to the airport right from here. We have a bag of weed we can’t take back with us on the plane, do you want to buy it off us? You can have it for cheap.”
Even the early stages of this negotiation were cut short. Nausea overcame me, and it was all I could do to make it outside to vomit elaborately in the parking lot. The couple left, passing me by with pitying stares as I lay on the hot tarmac. No, definitely not a cop, guys. I waved, but they probably had me pegged as someone who had already overdone things. That’s right, y’all. I just can’t take my venom these days. One shot and I’m a complete wreck. No poison for me. I’m a real lightweight these days.
The moral of the story? Never go outside. Unless it’s a beautiful day, and you just read a newspaper article about the extinction of Buck Moths.
By Paul Oswell
Spring in New Orleans is a time to live with gusto. Look, it’s not like we as a city undergo the trials of long, harsh winters. Sure, there might be a few unwelcome days in January when we have to drip our taps to avoid freezing our exposed pipes, or spend the odd weekend huddled up in quilts that have been lying dormant in the furthest reaches of our closets. Living in the near-tropics, though, we don’t have the ordeal of the months-long assault of sleet and snow that our northern cousins annually endure.
The summer months, by contrast, are very much ours to complain about, annually discussed in wary, Game of Thronesian terms as May and June approach. Air conditioning units are reluctantly powered up and the humidity approaches with relentless inevitability. What is damp may never dry…you know the mantras. For a few weeks in and around April and May, though, the city is our panoramic playground, when we can galavant freely with a cursory application of sunscreen, and a single shower a day is more than sufficient. Festivals abound, windows are opened with alacrity and a carefree, vernal freedom reigns.
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I awoke one late morning to a cinematically pleasant day. We had a shared afternoon off, and had planned to go to the movies. “We’re not doing that,” she said. “It would be a disgusting waste of this perfect weather.” I didn’t need too much persuading and I was summarily dispatched to the store to buy picnic supplies...cheeses, wine, fresh bread and all the dips we could snort.
Arriving at City Park, it was clear that a lot of people had co-opted our completely original idea; blankets spread with abandon, music speakers blared, and even the odd frisbee was dusted off for that year’s first taste of freedom. We found a spot under the shade of a tree and ate and drank and basked with a glow in the idyllic scene. There was an infectious jollity permeating the park, collective anxieties evaporating in the breeze-tinged sunshine.
I remember it being a lovely time - people that we knew passed by and said hello, and we’d both drunk enough wine to find almost all of my jokes and observations funny. As the afternoon passed and the sky began to bruise, her evening work obligations hoved into view. She was working a shift at a dive bar, so a level of jovial tipsiness was practically expected.
We started to pack away our trash and backpacks, and it’s at this point that things changed very much for the worst. As we’d been lying there, the branches of the trees had delivered a surprise gift alongside the welcome shade. At some point, a lone caterpillar had fallen from the tree and got caught in the fabric of my shirt under my armpit. We stood up, ready to leave, and as I slung my backpack over my shoulder, I clamped my arm down to tighten the straps.
Reader, have you ever been overcome with an almost unbearably- intense pain that you’re simultaneously completely mystified as to where it’s coming from?
I was fairly sure that I wasn’t a target for any would-be assassins, and it didn’t feel as though any internal organs were revolting against me, but it did suddenly feel like red hot needles were being violently jabbed into my side. I’m not sure what kind of noises I was making, but my girlfriend later said that she’d never really heard anything like them before.
As I slowly peeled my arm away from my side, tears streaming down my reddening face, a slightly squashed and indignant-looking Buck Moth caterpillar wormed its way slowly free of the material it had attached itself to and fell to the floor. For those of you who have yet to have the pleasure, these spike-laden larvae are not only happy to jam their spines into you if they feel it necessary, but they also then deliver a venomous lagniappe of eye-poppingly painful poison, just for good measure.
Not only had this wriggly demon rather unsportingly attached itself to me, I had then UNDER MY OWN VOLITION jammed it aggressively into the soft, exposed skin of my own underarm with no small amount of force. If you’re in any doubt about the upshot of this whole sorry situation, let me be clear: it kind of smarted, I won’t lie.
As I concentrated on being a gibbering wreck for a while, writhing in agony on the grass while my girlfriend looked up the nearest pharmacies on her phone. She had no choice but to leave for her imminent shift (I was too shocked to summon up any judgment) but she found one, and pointed me in the right direction. I can’t remember getting there too well, but the journey (on foot) to a CVS lasted around four or five days, I think.
In the dim but oh so welcome neon glow of a multinational pharmacological retailer, I lumbered up to the prescription window and begged the assistant to get me the strongest pain-killing ointment available to humanity as soon as possible, or preferably an impromptu skin graft, if that’s a procedure that she was able to administer on site.
A tube of some kind of antiseptic balm was duly handed over. The cash registers seemed impossibly far away and so I just broke it open in the aisle, ripping off my shirt and maniacally slathering it on the stings. I’m sure a security video of this exists somewhere, but I hope it has long been taped over, or at least won’t come back to humiliate me should I ever achieve anything of note, as reassuringly unlikely as that might be, of course.
The cream was impressively fast acting, at least taking the edge off within a few seconds. I lined up to pay, shirtless, speechless and sweaty, salt tears lingering in my eyes. The young couple in front of me looked at me, smiling. At first I wondered why, but then the guy said to me quietly, “Hey man, I’m sure you’re not a cop.” Full marks for analysis. “We’ve been at Jazz Fest all weekend and we’re heading to the airport right from here. We have a bag of weed we can’t take back with us on the plane, do you want to buy it off us? You can have it for cheap.”
Even the early stages of this negotiation were cut short. Nausea overcame me, and it was all I could do to make it outside to vomit elaborately in the parking lot. The couple left, passing me by with pitying stares as I lay on the hot tarmac. No, definitely not a cop, guys. I waved, but they probably had me pegged as someone who had already overdone things. That’s right, y’all. I just can’t take my venom these days. One shot and I’m a complete wreck. No poison for me. I’m a real lightweight these days.
The moral of the story? Never go outside. Unless it’s a beautiful day, and you just read a newspaper article about the extinction of Buck Moths.
