Caterpillars

I was just in the middle of a fabulous crafting high- (about to insert a needle and thread to fashion a koozie into a camera case), when I finally had my first encounter with the wretched villian of Louisiana's Spring.
I was standing barefoot in the guesthouse (I now never want to again!), playing with my crafts, happy as an oyster that didn't get eaten last night, when suddenly- across my big toe exploded an electric stinging sensation, like getting stung at the same time by a bee and stinging nettles. I looked down and saw one of THESE MONSTERS meandering maliciously across my foot.

They look cute. Even furry. But be not fooled. They are terrible, cruel creatures creeping around EVERYWHERE this sesason. They drop in your lap from trees, they leap into your hand from low branches; yesterday Milo (the Chewbaca-esque non-dog) stepped on a couple and he was yelping and crying and kept trying to kick the sting off of his back paws. It was pitiful.


Images from today:

Men outside their toon-town colored project housing playing cards. One man sits on an electric box.

The abandoned house on Whitney whose fallen off plywood leaves the spraypainted irony: "DANG STABLE."

The fence opposite, outside a silver trailer that reads, "DO not enter or I will shoot. -T. Bet" and his phone number.

A small congregation of kids and grown-ups in bright t-shirts carrying large wooden crosses down the sidewalk uptown.

A rusted bicycle, overrun with weeds, now vegetably teathered to a telephone pole.

My eighty-ish year old neighbor hanging up ferns on her porch, then leaving to walk her dog, smoking a very long cigarette.

I like my neighborhood.