I was watch­ing Bill Moyers Jour­nal the other night and was intrigued by the final thought of the show. Moyers was dis­cussing addi­tional 200 bil­lion dol­lars that the pres­i­dent now says he needs for Iraq. He had an inter­est­ing story to tell about this:

All of which reminds me of the famous French nat­u­ral­ist, Henri Fabre, who was intrigued by a species of worms, known as pro­ces­sional cater­pil­lars, because they march single file in long unbro­ken lines. One day he came upon a line of them in the forest. He gath­ered them up, put them around the rim of a flower pot, and then started them walk­ing. Round and round they went, like a tiny merry-​go-​round, hour after hour. They kept going for days and even though food was near at hand, they never strayed from their well-​worn path. In the end, every one of them starved to death on end end­less march to nowhere. See tran­script of episode

On a side note, I’m not sure what the appro­pri­ate lit­er­ary com­par­i­son of this is. Is it an anal­ogy, metaphor, alle­gory or fable?