When I walked out to the pasture behind my house this morning, I found a small area that was filled with odd-looking caterpillars.  A closer look revealed that the caterpillars were in fact dead and in various stages of dissolution.  An area of perhaps 200 sq ft held hundreds or thousands of decaying caterpillars.

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The consensus from the caterpillar experts in my life — Jenn Forman Orth and Sam Jaffe — was that these unfortunate souls were likely from the family Noctuidae, the armyworms, and had fallen prey to a fungal infection.

 

When I went back to check on the killing fields this afternoon, I found an influx of new, live, caterpillars among the fallen.

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I’m guessing that the new fellas will succumb to the same fungal fate, but I’m very curious to see what I find tomorrow morning.