Earthquakes

I think I'm immune to earthquakes. I haven't felt ANY in the Bay Area lately, even when people in my building have. I didn't feel the big east coast one or its aftershocks the other day, even though I was in Maryland at the time and it was felt from Georgia all the way to Canada. The last quake I remember feeling was in Panama, when I was on the 10th floor (or higher, I don't remember exactly which floor I was on) and there were 2 in 2 days. Panama = probably not the best place to be during a quake, since the buildings aren't necessarily seismically sound.

To be honest though, I'm also immune to tornado sirens; I once napped through a huge thunderstorm and tornado sirens blaring in the middle of Iowa in the summer. Not sure about fires or tsunamis though...

Caterpillars

First of all, I had a caterpillar today INSIDE my apartment. It basically devoured my entire mint plant! Considering that I have screens on the windows, how the heck did it get in? Maybe it came in as an egg on a leaf, or crawled in when it was really small. I was shocked that it had escaped my attention until now, because it was more than an inch long and bright green.

Speaking of caterpillars, word on the street (well in the forest actually) is that mangrove skippers (a type of butterfly caterpillar found in mangroves) are eating the seedlings I planted in Panama a few months ago! This is interesting because no one has ever known this type of caterpillar to eat this particular species, AND it means I might have some differential survival between the places I planted seedlings. And that means I'll have results. Yay!