feigning twigginess
"There seemed to be a parade of walking sticks that day, too; I must have seen five or six of them, or the same one five or six times, which kept hitching a ride on my pants leg. One entomologist says that walking sticks, along with monarch butterflies, are able to feign death-- although I don't know how you could determine if a walking stick was feigning death or twigginess. At any rate, the female walking stick is absolutely casual about her egg-laying, dribbling out her eggs "from wherever she happens to be, and they drop willy-nilly"-- which I suppose might mean that my pants and I were suddenly in the walking stick business."
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek