280 days of Urbpandemonium #58

[urbpan]

A tiny caterpillar cuts lengths of grass stems and binds them with silk into a tube. At the insect's scale it is like a suit of armor made of bamboo. It protects the caterpillars from predators, like wasps and spiders. Look close--it's protecting a small spider from my gaze as well.


The spider abandons its hiding place, leaving the bagworm in place. This moth caterpillar is almost certainly
Psyche casta*, a European species first noticed in North America in where else but Boston, in 1931.



* The beautiful Greek word "Psyche" has a double meaning of both "the mind/soul" and "butterfly." In this case, the construction of the binomial comes to mean "moth who builds a fort."