Possum Philosophy

By ROCKY CAHILL

Daytona may have its Daytona 500 with 40 to 50 drivers competing for a chance to spend the day hurtling down the speedway for 500 miles at speeds up to 200+ miles per hour and huge amounts of cash for the winner. Indianapolis may offer huge paydays for the 33 drivers to wheel through the “Brickyard” in tiny “Indy” cars at speeds well over 200 mph, during the Indianapolis 500.  In Louisville, Kentucky, as many as 23 horses have run hoping to win big bucks in a race that normally takes around two minutes to complete.
Think these are impressive race statistics? Well, think again. Just across the hill, at least figuratively speaking, sits the small North Carolina town of Banner Elk, home of Lees-McRae College and Sugar Mountain Ski Resort. Banner Elk is also home of a race that draws as many as 1,400 entrants. Now, you may think this is some big race; must be a really big bicycle race or maybe a good-sized marathon with that many runners, maybe even some kind of cross-country ski event. Whichever it is, it must offer a pretty sizable purse to draw 1,400 racers. Well, you would be wrong.
The race is part of the annual Woolly Worm Festival. And the racers are caterpillars. You know the kind, the woolly-looking, black-and-brown-striped caterpillars you see crawling across roads, driveways, parking lots and up weeds, walls, houses and such this time of year. And the purse, well it won’t make you an instant millionaire, but you can leave with $1,000 in your pocket at day’s end. That is, if your race-worm likes to climb.
Wondering just what is a woolly worm? A wooly worm (called a wooly bear in much of the northeastern U.S.) is a hairy caterpillar. Apparently there are several different types of moths that produce similar looking caterpillars. However, according to an article on the Web site http://www.WoollyWorm.com, the ones used for racing and weather predicting are the larval stage of the Isabella tiger-moth. Their bodies have 13 furry-looking bands of hairs, (woolly worm experts say these correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.) These bands alternate between black and brown in color. Legend has it that these little critters predict the type winter we will have based on their color. The more brown on a caterpillar, the milder our winter, while a greater amount of black predicts a winter of more severe weather.
According to http://www.WoollyWorm.com, Jim Morton was editor of Mountain Living, (a Banner Elk-based magazine that is unfortunately no longer published.) He was working on a story about the woolly worm and its ability to predict winter weather. As he researched for his article, he photographed a woolly weather-predictor to use with his piece. The next day he came across another of these meteorological-minded worms that had the exact opposite color, thus a totally different prediction.
Soon after, he and a group of local citizens decided to host a festival celebrating the woolly worm and its weather predicting capabilities. The idea was to have these woolly worms race by climbing a three feet long string, with the fastest worm named the official weather predictor for the season. The first such event was sparsely attended due in part to miserable weather that weekend. However, Bristol’s WCYB-TV, no doubt due in large part to a slow news weekend, sent a camera crew. Its piece on the area’s first woolly worm festival was, again no doubt due to a slow news weekend, was picked up by the NBC network and gave the town and its high-climbing rapid weather predictors national coverage. The event has grown by leaps and bounds since. 
The festival is held on Saturday and Sunday on the third weekend of October each year. It now attracts more than 15,000 visitors a year. Along with worm racin’ and all things woolly, there are vendors of a vast assortment of hand-crafts, artwork and some absolutely delicious foodstuffs, there is also music of different genres.
The first time I went, I was with my brothers and we had a good time. Since then, Terry and I generally try to go for an afternoon. It is not a bad drive and this time of year is usually very pleasant weather. If you’re one of those “early shoppers,” it offers a good chance to pick up some unique handcrafted Christmas gifts.
The admission fee is small, and the entire event is, as they now say, family friendly. If you’re inclined to take part, there are numerous vendors of woolly worms usually prowling the grounds swearing they’ve got the fastest worms on 18 legs (actually I think they only have six legs and some growths that look like them but are not.) You can become the Jack Rouse or Richard Childress of the worm-racing world for a modest three or four bucks. However, the race does require a $5 entry fee. Be prepared to stay a while, as the race is run in heats and with over 1,400 or so racers it takes almost all day to complete. Proceeds from the festival go to local charities.
This is truly a good time of year to drive through the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina if for no other reason than the beautiful scenery provided by the leaves changing their colors. And with gas coming down some in price, it is not an unreasonable drive to take the family over to see the “Running of the Worms.” For more information on the festival and its events, go to http://www.woollyworm.com, or http://www.townofbannerelk.org.