IT ALL started as a normal Saturday... a pot of real ethically-picked-by-happy-Fairtrade-farmers-on-a-decent-wage coffee in bed, the sun poking a golden finger through the bedroom blinds. Porridge oats with figs – all bodily functions catered for here.
The helter skelter days of children’s football and swimming classes are long since past – don’t you just love the smell of chlorine in the morning? They say that the smell has nothing to do with the chlorine but more to do with the urine reacting in the water. But let us not go there.
Last Saturday felt like another day in Paradise to us. The young adult in the next room had no intention of evacuating his scratcher this side of noon and, oh, the peace of it all.
What was not to love?
But then I went out to visit the washing line. Ah the sweet joy of a drying day and last Saturday promised to be a four-sheets-to-the-wind kind of a day, in the very literal sense.
Stay with me, reader. Think not that I am going to wander off down a path of reverie about the joys of a good drying day and the beauty of a bright blue flower smiling up at you from a pot.
I went out to have a look at my lilies. I don’t get to have them in the house because some people are allergic and hate the smell.
I had taken my precious pot of Madonnas and put them up on the bench to fend off all but the Edmund Hillary of slugs. They organise in Roman legions in my garden at this time of year.
And Slugimus Maxiumus has already demolished a host of golden daffodils in the front garden, so they have form.
But come back with me to the garden last Saturday morning.
For it was then that I spotted it on my lilies. One look and I knew that big beast was a man’s job. It’s up there – or down there – with blocked toilets and bins-out days.
I beat a hasty retreat, choking back a shriek with a full hand in the mouth as I fell in through the back door.
“There is a green caterpillar outside on my lily,” I said with well-rehearsed nonchalance. Although listeners may have remarked that my voice was an octave higher than normal.
Inside I was thinking I was lucky to get away with my right hand intact.
He wandered out, muttering that he’d just pluck it off, put it on the ground and leave it to go its own sweet way.
He flew back in – enter, left, pursued by a bear. Only it wasn’t a bear, it was an enormous beastie snacking on my Madonnas.
“What is that?” he said.
“Just a green caterpillar,” I said authoritatively. Best not to make a big deal, especially to he who must, ultimately, deal with it.
“It is huge and has six legs,” he said.
“Caterpillars have six legs,” I said.
“Caterpillars have more than six legs and it is not a caterpillar,” he said.
He went to hunt out his well-thumbed guide to Irish wildlife. Once, that might have meant a guide to the pubs of Ireland, now it means great big horrible beasties.
The thing stayed where it was.
He hunted for a name for the thing.
Turns out, it's a Whatfit.
“Whatfit?” you may well ask.
Put simply, it means, What the f*** is that?
But he still refused to remove it. The back garden has become no-man’s land.
The sheets dried in the wind. The day wound its way on. And later, he remarked that he had had another look and the thing had moved from the lily buds – which was very kind of it – and down to the soil below for a nap.
“Interesting that it has changed colour from green to brown to match in with its surroundings,” said our answer to Attenborough.
“OK, our Whatfit is a chameleon but are you going to do something about it?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
Meanwhile, it’s dining out on my Madonnas.
We have had past travails in the garden department. One year, we had gallons of gloopy slug slime. There was so much that you needed to a set of skis to make the washing line and when I opened the shed door, I half expected to find Sigourney Weaver, trussed up in a big web of slime like that scene from Alien.
But the Whatfit is something new. It is an ornithological wonder. We may have to call in the experts.
I have tried drowning it in my ethical coffee grounds, but it is not playing ball. I wonder would it like a bath in beer – I was always consoled that it made such a happy death for the slug legions.
But at this stage, we have left it to its own devices. The back garden is no-man’s land. That boy is probably huge and green and slumbering across the back door step, even as I write.
What to do with our Whatfit... here’s hoping it shall fly away.
