Osakatomebaby

Transcribed from a conversation with my mother this morning:

MOM: Austin is being attacked by worms...I mean like nature worms. They're everywhere. You'll walk out to your car in the morning and everything will be covered with netting. They'll crawl all over you. I've never experienced anything like it before.

(Aside to kids)What? No we don't have any bananas guys. We have no bananas tod-ay.

So there's these thin obscure little nettings you walk into all the time. These little guys spin their nets. They can move about...looks like they move about an inch every thirty seconds. You should see our Honda--you can hardly see the grey for the worms! The strings end up getting twisted together forming little ropes coming out of the trees.

I've talked to the locals and I don't think anything like this has ever happened before.

I was watching the TV and I thought it was the rain but I heard this sound and I think it was the worms eating. There's this itty bitty munching noise--background noise. Munch munch. It must be thousands of these little worms eating.

But what are they eating? They go to the ground but the grass is still green so one hopes...Well the animals are okay so they're not eating the animals. The green plants are still there.

It's quite frightening.

MOLLY: It's like a Hitchcock movie.

MOM: Yeah but in miniature. You can't sit out too long without one of them starting to crawl all over you or one of them hitting you.

And I totally think, aw don't worry, they won't bite you--and one of those little sucker bit me! I thought, what is this all about? Why are you biting me?

This news isn't getting out of Austin, so clearly the situation is more dire than imagined.