On summer evenings, Sam Jaffe has a tendency to loiter in gas station parking lots. This behavior has resulted in a continued acquaintance with the local police. Fortunately, he has the perfect accessory to dispel law enforcement concerns: a butterfly net.
“As long as I have my net, I’m O.K.”
Jaffe is the founder and executive director of The Caterpillar Lab, an educational nonprofit based in Keene, New Hampshire.
The organization hosts a warm-weather zoo of approximately 100 native caterpillar species, which is why Jaffe can be found hunting female moths under high-intensity lights at gas stations. And in his backyard, where he makes “lunar landing sites” with white sheets and mercury vapor lights. He collects the moths’ eggs and releases them the next evening. When the eggs hatch, he’ll have another batch of caterpillars to stock exhibits.
Jaffe and his crew collect most of their specimens in or nearby Keene. By focusing on such a small geographic area, The Caterpillar Lab emphasizes the incredible diversity of moth and butterfly life in the region – most of it overlooked. Take, for example, the Abbot’s sphinx caterpillar, a species that sports a convincing false eye and emits a hissing noise. “It’s a spectacular, tropical-looking insect,” said Jaffe. “People say, ‘wait a minute, we don’t have that in New England!’”
Parasitoid wasps and flies are also a big part of caterpillar life, and Jaffe doesn’t shy away from their grisly work. An exhibit may show a caterpillar erupting with ichneumon wasp larvae, or one that contains “swimming larvae of a tachnid fly, looking excited to come out.”
O.K., that makes me queasy. But in any event, I’m delighted to announce that The Caterpillar Lab will be featured at the 2016 Northern Woodlands Conference. This third annual event will take place the last weekend in September – registration opens now.
Sponsored by The Bailey Charitable Foundation and The Trust for Public Land, the conference includes a fun mashup of topics, reflecting the breadth of content covered in Northern Woodlands magazine. There are writing workshops, readings, and a nature illustration class. Authors Rick Bass and Jeffrey Lent will both be there, as well as poet Verandah Porche. Richard Ober is giving this year’s keynote address.
Susan Morse will give a fun presentation on scent marking. There’ll be a dynamic outdoor educator workshop. We’ll have talks on loons, ice storms, and eagles. Northern Woodlands co-founder and former publisher Stephen Long will discuss his book on the ’38 hurricane. Logger and soon-to-be published author Bill Torrey will share some stories at open mic night, and we hope you will, too.
And there will be caterpillars. A room full of caterpillars. Caterpillars that look like fungus, or chewed up leaves. Even a monkey slug caterpillar, which resembles a hairy starfish.