![]() ![]() A caterpillar about three-quarters of an inch long was wriggling across his palm. I was whacking a plant nearby, just for the hell of it. He spread a white nylon sheet on the ground, then started whacking the bush with a pole to dislodge anything that might be clinging to it. ![]() ![]() This past October, I was travelling with him when he tried yet again. He has friends who own a house along the Devils River, and each time he has visited them he has stopped by the exact same shrub to investigate. The way other people might recall a marvellous restaurant or a heartbreaking vista, Wagner remembers a propitious plant. He has close-cropped silvery hair and a square jaw and bears a passing resemblance to George C. Wagner is an entomologist who teaches at the University of Connecticut. It was on one of these roads that, a few years ago, David Wagner noticed a shrub that seemed to him peculiarly filled with promise. ![]() Access to the river is limited unless you’re in a kayak, the only way to travel upstream is along a skein of rutted dirt roads. The Devils River, in southwestern Texas, runs, mirage-like, along the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, through some of the most barren countryside in the United States. ![]()
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