Guts and Outages

My apologies for my unexpected absence from the blog-o-sphere, I've been busy watching caterpillars crawl.

Okay - not really.

When I'm working out of my base at the northern end of the state, I'm at the mercy of an internet provider whose service is even less reliable than a broken clock.

While the provider will remain nameless, their non-FIOS service was knocked out by severe storms over the weekend. Their commitment to servicing non-FIOS customers being what it is, I expect I'll be able to access the internet "up north" somewhere around the middle of August.

But back to caterpillars. I promised to share their unique form of locomotion. It's been coined the gut thrust.

Now mind you, this discovery came only after scientists received a grant to build tiny caterpillar treadmills which were placed in front of state-of-the art x-ray equipment. All of this because, since caterpillars have no bones or muscles, scientists were dying to know how the caterpillar manages to get around.

After days of trying to figure out how to motivate a caterpillar to use a treadmill, the big discovery occurred.

The little critter actually coils its gut up into a ball at the back end of his body - then "throws" its gut toward the front. The gut thrust drives the caterpillar forward.

I shudder to think about it. We've all had those "burps" that turn out to be a little juicer than expected. Imagine dealing with that every time we needed to put one foot in front of the other.

I know. I know. Right about now you're wishing I had that same unreliable internet provider at my southern base of operations.