So cool but so ew ew ew

I was pretty excited when I found out the caterpillars returned to our dill plants this year, but even those cool striped creatures pale in comparison with this three-inch-long garden discovery:

I haven't seen anything like it, but I guessed it was one of the tomato hornworm caterpillars I've heard about, since it was on the tomatoes, it's a caterpillar, and it has a little horn. I checked into it, and it's actually the related tobacco hornworm, apparently.

But it's a parasitized tobacco hornworm. That means those white things on its back are wasp eggs, laid in the back of a host caterpillar that will eventually be killed by emerging parasitic wasps!

I probably should just have let it be, but since the caterpillar was still alive, I plucked it off my tomato and moved it across the yard, trying to disturb as few of the eggs as possible. The caterpillar squirmed, and even though I was wearing gloves, I squealed in an enthralled-but-viscerally-disgusted kind of way.

I wonder what my neighbors think if they overheard my gardening pursuits. Meanwhile, Joe and I have been trying to work the word parasitized into our daily conversations. And I should soon have a little squad of defender-wasps protecting my garden in their own parasitic way.

Nature is weird.

Light show

Oh yeah, did you hear about the somewhat-mysterious light and accompanying boom that terrified the residents of Norfolk? 

We could see it from our neighborhood! We were almost home from visiting Joe's family and I (the driver) was pretty startled to see what looked like a strange sort of orange firework, or perhaps a meteor, coming down above the trees.  Joe saw it, too, though he took it in better stride, and we talked about what it could be as we turned onto our street. We figured it was just a few miles away, though, and not across the Potomac River and 100 miles further on south! 

Anyway, it was probably a meteor, seems to be the latest conclusion. What a world.

Vertical!

Hey, it's my keyboard!

I believe that, while I worked at the Dispatch, I got more comments on this keyboard than I did on the actual quality of my work.

It had been used before me by a co-worker with wrist problems until she switched to a position that required less typing and more keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard sat unused until I asked if I could maybe use it, and everyone said yes, please, because it scared them. And no one ever borrowed my computer again.

It took me about a day's practice to type fluently on it, and soon I was back up to 90 words a minute or so. 

The side mirrors are mostly meant to help you with the numbers and the function keys, since all but the most adept touch-typers like to peek when they punch those. The text on the F and # keys is even inverted so it shows up right in the mirrors.

I got to take the pricey keyboard with me when I left the Dispatch, and no one was sad to see it go (except occasional kids who came through the newsroom on job-shadowing days, for whom it was definitely a highlight). The mirrors got broken off in the move, but it still works great. 

Now I use Joe's computer and keyboard more often than I use my own. I miss the lovely vertical, which is sitting quietly next to me.