A Fuzzy Caterpillar.

January 8. 

January 8, 2017

I find by hanging Smith's thermometer on the same nail with ours that it stands 5° below ours. It was 18° at 3 p. m. by ours when I went out to walk. 

I picked up on the bare ice of the river, 

opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, 

on a small space blown bare of snow, 

a fuzzy caterpillar,

black at the two ends 

and red-brown in the middle, 

rolled into a ball 

or close ring, like a woodchuck.

I pressed it hard between my fingers and found it frozen. I put it into my hat, and when I took it out in the evening, it soon began to stir and at length crawled about, but a portion of it was not quite flexible. It took some time for it to thaw. This is the fifth cold day, and it must have been frozen so long. It was more than an inch long.

Shagbark Hickory with Porcupine  Den
January 8,  2017

Miss Minott tells me that she does not think her brother George has ever been to Boston more than once (though she tells me he says he has been twice), and certainly not since 1812. [He since tells me once.]

He was born in the Casey house, i. e. the same in which C. lived, the second of three that stood beyond the old black house beyond Moore's. Casey was a Guinea negro. Casey used to weep in his latter days when he thought of his wife and two children in Africa from whom he was kidnapped. Minott went only to the East Quarter schools. The house he now lives in is about sixty years old, was moved from beside Casey's to where it now stands be fore it was roofed. Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. 

He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism. Does nothing whatever in the house but read the newspapers and few old books they have, the Almanac especially, and hold the cats, and very little indeed out of the house. Is just able to saw and split the wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1857

A fuzzy caterpillar . . . See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. ") January 24, 1858 ("I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places."); February 11, 1857 ("Near the other swamp white oak on Shattuck's piece I found another caterpillar on the ice.”); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”).

Boston more than once . . . since 1812. See March 23, 1854 ("Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815.”)  and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023