Looky, Looky, Looky At This Ooky, Ooky, Ooky Critter

You know how I have a penchant for discovering all manner of creepy crawlies in and around my classroom? Uh huh. It's a gift. Look what The Pony and I found last week on our way out the end door of Newmentia after school:

He's a handsome one, as worms go. I think he's a hornworm. I do appreciate his hue. Green is, after all, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's favorite color. Bet you'd never have guessed that. But what I don't appreciate is that he looks suspiciously like that critter that peers around a nice ripe tomato at me the summer we planted a garden.

Yep. I virtually skipped out there to the back yard with a basket on my arm, ready to harvest the beautiful tomatoes we had been letting ripen. I went to pull it off the vine, and my fingers sunk into the back of it like into a suppurating flesh wound. Not that Mrs. HM is in the habit of poking her digits into suppurating flesh wounds all willy-nilly. The that darn tomato hornworm reared its ugly head, just before the screams of Mrs. HM brought Farmer H a-runnin' to the garden to smoosh that tomato horn worm between his thumb and forefinger, right after it tried to take a bite of Farmer thumb. Tomato seeds squirted out like a runny poop rainbow.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom can appreciate the glory of color and movement in a horn worm, and refrain from grinding it to oblivion beneath the heel of her New Balance. But that doesn't mean she likes him.

He'll probably turn up in my classroom in the near future.