Here's a little cool something I just found out about: the bagworm. They live in the northern US, and as my family and I were waiting in the outdoor train station for my grandparents to come into Long Island, guess what we saw? Two purple ponies. And when I say two purple ponies, I mean a bagworm. Not that we knew what it was then.
The picture above shows what looks like a pinecone hanging from a rail, which is what we saw. Albeit a weird looking pinecone, hanging from a weird place (the rail of the stairs), but a pinecone nonetheless. Looking closer, we discovered that it was moving, twisting, in what I thought was the wind. But Hillary, my father's girlfriend, pointed out that it was moving pretty irregularly. Looking even closer, I saw that it was squinching in and out, as if breathing, pulsating. And it seemed as though bits of the pine had stuck onto it and there was this white sticky thing underneath the covering. The mouth at the top seemed to be sucking and I was totally grossed out. Very horror movie-ish except that it was only a few inches tall. I felt crawly inside. But something moved me to take note of what it was, something made em want to figure out exactly what this pinecone beast was.
So getting home, I grabbed my trusty laptop, and typed in "slug disguised as pinecone". Nothing. Undaunted, I tried "cocoon disguised as pinecone", and lo and behold, up popped the word bagworm. Image search confirmed it was the one and only. A little research on wikipedia turned up exactly what this icky oozy awesome creature was.
Basically, a bagworm is a caterpillar that turns into a moth. But, unlike most caterpillars, the moment it is born, it begins it's cocoon, spinning this sticky silk case around it, and picking up the leaves of its host tree, to look as though it is part of the tree. It then sits inside its case, occasionally popping out its head to munch it's host tree and suck out all the nutrients. The female never once fully leaves her case once it is built. She develops no wings. The male, on the other hand, does, and flies over to a female who sticks enough of herself out of her bag/case/thing for him to mate with her. She then recedes back into her hidey hole, lays her eggs(300 to 1,000 in one bag), and dies, never once fully coming out of the bag, which is why they're called bagworms. Also, horrifying enough, the evergreen bagworm, the type we witnessed, does not even lay her eggs and die, mummified by her own offspring, as the other bagworms do. No, she as to do something even worse: She just sits down and dies, the eggs inside her, and then they hatch still inside her, and break out once their born. Being born inside your own dead mother, to then eat you way out?!? Whoa. . .
And that is the truth, the slimy, grimy ugly cool truth, and nothing but it. Cool, huh? Bet I made you feel crawly inside. Just think about that when you see a pinecone, and maybe, lean a little closer and check to see it isn't a bagworm.
