Ceiling critters

What is on my ceiling? Looks like a thumbprint—gray, like newsprint. Except… my kitchen ceiling is the cottage cheese type. A thumbprint isn’t possible.

In the back of my mind was a recent dinner party, at which a bottle of zinfandel misbehaved or, rather, its cork did, and red splattered the ceiling. But not there. And anyway, I cleaned it all, didn’t I? Could this have been a remnant? I couldn’t imagine what caused the gray smudge. I made a mental note to clean it somehow.

Next day, having forgotten all about it, I did a double take. Was it that large yesterday? Looks like two thumbprints today. I got up on a ladder and looked through a magnifying glass.

Oh, it’s a dusting of something. Mold? In the desert? I rubbed my finger across the spot. Wait a minute, use the high-power portion of the glass. Yikes! Are those microscopic heads? They’re moving! They’re alive.

I got a camera and snapped a macro photo, having much trouble focusing while wavering on the ladder. I sent the photo off to Uncle Lenny. Handy to have an entomologist in the family. Lenny always responds right away, but he must have been teaching a class.

“You know I’m not the hysterical type,” I wrote him hours later, “but now that I know there are critters multiplying on my ceiling, right over my head in fact, I can’t think of much else.”

“It was likely a single egg sac that hatched. Chances are they’ll die anyway since there’s nothing to eat.”

A mist of diluted bleach took care of them. But what were they? Caterpillars, Lenny said. Probably laid by a moth.

Right. I leave the doors and windows open and we always have moths fluttering around. A moth laid an egg sac on my kitchen ceiling. I had caterpillar hatchlings. Cute.