I liiiiiive!

C7, the escape artist caterpillar of doom, is alive and eating once again. To celebrate this, we have given him a name: Fillorkadork.

He's probably still doomed just for having that for a name, but oh well.

I seem to not have blogged about him, so here is his backstory as told to various other people through e-mails:
Today we discovered that caterpillars who have eaten all the leaves of their host plants will travel great lengths to find new food....surprisingly great lengths. Sarah and I went into lab and discovered that our caterpillar called C7 was missing...and wasn't in with any of the other caterpillars, or in the glass aquarium we had the pots in....oh no. It had, in less than 12 hours, crawled out of its cup, up the side of the aquarium, off the aquarium, and along the counter into the corner. >.<; It's alive, for now, but we're wondering if it actually DID leave to find more food, because now every time we put it on a new plant it climbs down the stem and makes a beeline for the edge of the cup... Yep. C7 is a prime example of natural selection doing its thing. I expect when we go into lab tomorrow it will be dead. We've covered all the cups with perforated Saran Wrap, but who knows- that might not stop C7 in its bid for freedom.

When we left the lab that night, C7 was barely alive, in the corner of its cup, curled in a ball. We came back the next day, and it was in the same spot, not moving. Sarah poked it and it moved, so we figured we'd wait another day.

Today we go in? C7 is alive and devouring the plant once more. So now we are left wondering exactly what drove it to act so odd...

Current Theories Include
1) Fillorkadork is stupid. End of story.
2) Wanderlust hit a little too early and he went off to explore the vastness of the world around him. Unfortunately, he also forgot to pack a lunch.
3) He felt that he was trapped and decided to perform a jailbreak. The two days of not eating once he returned were a protest against our evil regime.
4) He thought he was getting too fat and decided to go for a dayhike and then practice short-term anorexia.
5) Some idiot in the lab moved him as a prank, and it took two days for him to recover from the stress.
6) He was a martyr for the cause of his brethren and risked his life to contact the resistance.
7) He was parasitized by something that altered his behavior. If a wasp hatches instead of a caterpillar once he pupates, we will know the truth.
8) He is the only fucking Brassica caterpillar to not like Brassica plants.