Bugs are cool. There is at all times a weirder one than the weirdest one you’ve ever seen.

A couple of thousand years ago, or in the Spring of ‘92, I caught a large caterpillar with a horn on his back. It was a single, large horn curved backwards at the end of his body. It wasn’t very much of a defensive mechanism, as shaking his butt didn’t do much to shake the horn. I had no trouble at all picking him up.

I think the horn was more of a message, and in that respect it is quite effective. Caterpillars do not speak bird language, and even if they did they couldn’t have conveyed a complicated message so quickly and accurately as with the horn. A bird seeing this horn immediately knows what the caterpillar is trying to say:

“Okay, listen up, beakface. There’s two ways we can play this. Either you can fly off now and go make a ruckus somewhere else, or you can taste the pointy wrath of my horn in your pecker. You think I can’t handle this thing? You think it’s just aimlessly trailing along on my back? Think again, buddy. Other caterpillars come right out with their trick. They’re prickly all over their body, but a few good pecks and you’ve got your midday snack, am I right? Now, this is different. Think about this. Why would a caterpillar only have 1 unpleasant extremity, large but which he cannot wield? Want to come and find out? Or have you figured it out yet? That’s right. I’m keeping it still until you’re close enough. Come. Come closer. You’ll see. Want to find out? Take a chance. Look at that bloody big horn back there. How fast can I swing that around and shove it up your bird butt, do you think? Pretty darn fast, I think. Pretty darn fast.”