Caterpillars

So today I took a drive and was surprised to see a bunch of caterpillars on and about the hiway. When I say a bunch I mean in the neighborhood of 100 or so. Thats a lot of bugs. They werent remarkable in their appearance, mostly black and fuzzy and around 2-3 inches long. What was remarkable was their activity. All the caterpillars I seen today were crossing the hiway. Now I had to ask myself why? First guess ...food. Im not an entomologist(?) or any kind of behavioral scientist so i'm just making guesses here. Caterpillars, I believe, eat plants and leaves and there seemed to be plenty of foliage on both sides of the hiway so i scratched food. Next guess...confusion. Maybe caterpillars just cruise around with no real direction looking for stuff to see and things to do? Except...none of the caterpillars were going up or down the hiway they were all going across it. Scratched confusion they clearly had their tiny minds made up. Guess #3... biological hazards on one side of the hiway. I thought perhaps some evil farmer who wanted to keep his crops intact and saleable had sprayed his fields with anti-caterpillar spray...nope, there were caterpillars crossing from both sides of the hiway...bio-hazard scratched! Then I began to think like a caterpillar (sidenote, I am fairly fuzzy). Why on earth would I, as a 3 inch bug with a top speed of maybe 20 ft. per minute, attempt to cross a busy 4 lane hiway with cars and trucks blazing by at 70+ mph threatening at any moment to make me a SPLATTERPILLAR? Then it came to me... these are probably all male caterpillars in search of some fuzzy lovin! Hey we have all done some crazy stuff in the hope of scoring some snuggle time with the opposite sex right? Which makes me wonder, are we so different than our fuzzy neighbors the caterpillar? I think not. Im off to eat a leaf and see the world from the other side. Please dont run over me.