What's In a Name?

Kelly and I love to hike. I think that's pretty well known. And we want the boys to experience the great outdoors with us. So we've decided to try to go hiking every weekend this summer.

Last weekend was our debut hike. We started off easy, exploring the quarry at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.



At first, everything was going great. The weather was gorgeous, the boys were having a good time, all signs were pointing toward a perfect maiden voyage. And that's when we ran into them...

We found ourselves in a forested area near the banks of Little Cottonwood Creek. Kelly was leading the way when, suddenly, he let out a shriek and started batting his hands above his head.

"Ugh! They're all over me!" Kelly declared.

The boys froze! What was all over him?

Almost in unison, Gus and Niko jumped, their arms waving frantically in the air around their bodies.

What was it? What could it be? Mosquitoes? Spiders? Horse flies?

"Tree leeches!" Kelly screamed. "There are tree leeches all over me!"

Tree leeches? I thought. What the BLEEP are tree leeches?

Kelly fought his way toward the shore of the creek, his hands flailing above his head like some sort of Spanish dancer on crack.

Gus trotted in place, seemingly having lost complete control of his upper body, all the while screeching, "Get them off of me, get them off of me!"

Niko, although mere feet from Kelly and the safety of the tree-free shore, chose instead to stand frozen, between desperate sobs he mumbled, "They're all over me."

For my part, I kept quizzing, "Tree leeches? Tree leeches?"

And then I too was attacked, when I stumbled into a swarm of these amazing water-free blood suckers. Only when they fell on to me, they ended up being caterpillars.

Throughout the forest silvery strings of silk hung from the leaves. At the bottom of each string a tiny caterpillar desperately trying to inch its way up to the top in order to form a cocoon.



"THEY'RE CATERPILLARS!" I yelled in hopes my voice would be heard over the sounds of various shrieks. "THEY'RE JUST CATERPILLARS!" I repeated.

I'm not sure if it actually was my calm, reassuring bellowing or the fact that all three of my guys had made it to the safety of the shoreline, but the terror stopped.

When I joined them, calmly having navigated my way past as many of the sticky strings as possible, I had a handful of the little guys on my shoulders, arms, and hat.

Suddenly, when they weren't dropping on the boys like some sort of ace special forces paratroopers, the little bugs were intriguing. The boys loved watching them inch around on my hand.

By the time we started back, the boys' fear of "tree leeches" seemed to diminish. So much so that when we stopped to pick up something for lunch and they discovered a stowaway in the car on Kelly's seat, they both demanded that not only was it not to be harmed, but it was to be relocated to a bush in our backyard. All because it went from being a tree leech to a caterpillar!

Read more about our adventure with the tree leeches in the upcoming edition of QSaltLake!