Gerbils and Caterpillars and Moths, Oh My

10/4/07

Is that a gerbil in your pocket, or are you just some weird pervert?

First of all, sad days, ladies and gentlemen; my goldfish of some five years finally croaked and went belly-up on us. Despite my reputation as a bit of a procrastinator, it took me a mere 2 days to actually fish him out of there and throw it away. My wife’s constant urging over the two weeks that followed to actually clean out the empty, stagnant and rapidly algae-blooming aquarium, was probably just her way of dealing with the grief. I finally succumbed under threat of abstinence and we were left with this empty tank staring us in the face every day. What to do? Clearly the best course of action was to fill it with rodents.

Disturbing sexual urban myths notwithstanding*, Hanni and I decided to get a couple of gerbils. We finally settled on two males from Pet Warehouse, mostly because they were the only place within a 20 mile radius that fucking had gerbils. I don’t know if there’s recently been a run on the tiny creatures, but Springfield is certainly uncontaminated with them, ladies and gentlemen. Here are the lucky winners:

We ended up naming them Alexander and Hamilton, ‘cause I roll Founding Father style. They are slightly cuddlier than a fish, and more entertaining to watch. I just hope to Christ we didn’t make some egregious error and actually ended up with a male and a female. I’m not really into swarms of rodents. Should that be the case, we may have a new promotion here at Drunken Ramblings: Read the blog, get a free tiny mammal!

That’s not the only life Hanni and I have cultivated in the last few months, either. My mother brought me a parsley plant one day that ended up having like 6 of these guys stowed away inside it:

After some research and a hastily-assembled and spartan terrarium, I determined they were Black Swallowtail caterpillars. The really fun thing about them, aside from their wicked-awesome coloring which I’m considering copying for a suit pattern, is a little orange, fleshy fork that comes out of their head. Yeah, they totally rock a stink gland.

You would, by the way, be astounded at how much a caterpillar can poop. Fed steadily for several days on a staggering amount of parsley, the guys soon climbed the makeshift sticks and settled back into these kick-ass silk hammocks.

For whatever reason, I always thought caterpillars spun silk into a chrysalis, but that’s not the case. In fact, they attach themselves with silk, but the actual pupae is the result of a molting which we were lucky enough to watch on one of these guys, though sadly we didn’t get it on video. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen and only takes about a minute for them to complete. Here's a pretty good simulacrum of the process through a little Monarch time-lapse, y'all! -

About 10 days later here’s what we got:

Pretty, huh? We also found a caterpillar of a different sort in some corn we bought at the farmer’s market. Not quite as stunning, is the corn worm.

Also, they turn into perhaps one of the god-awful ugliest moths I’ve ever seen. But, you know, we can’t choose our species, I suppose.

That’s all the news from Jett’s Wild Kingdom, dear readers. I’m thinking our next animal project will be rearing and training a massive hoard of loyal spider soldiers to unleash upon my foes. BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!




*Stuffing a gerbil, shaved or not, lubed or not, into one’s asshole is clearly physically impossible if you just think about it for a few seconds. Essentially what you’d end up with is a slippery, crushed gerbil corpse acting as a terrifically inefficient and bloody dildo. Leave poor Richard Gere alone.