Creepy Crawlers

Apparently it's caterpillar season in Palo Alto. I've lived in the Bay Area for almost 5 years, spending much of my time in the peninsula and I've never even heard of such a thing. Apparently, it's such an important thing that they've announced it on Stanford's intranet! They are the larvae of the Western Tussock moth and have evidently found substantial breeding opportunites in the Bay.

So yeah, I deal with pretty disgusting things in my day to day work life but it would never have prepared me for caterpillar season. There are literally thousands of these creepy crawlers all over the Stanford campus, swinging from trees on their invisible silk threads just waiting to hit you in your face when you least suspect it. And if that wasn't enough, it is virtually impossible to navigate your way around campus without stepping on at least 100 of them. Ugh.

So you can imagine my disgust, that while in the sanctuary of my own workplace (often thought of as a sterile environment and safe enough to take your 3-month old baby to), finding one of these fuzzy wuzzys...on my patient's husband! How am I supposed to update him on his wife while he has this monster crawling around his shoulder NEAR HIS MOUTH! I can't work in these conditions.