The Urban Pantheist

At first it looks like an extra large woolly bear, that never developed the reddish brown band. Or maybe it died it's brown setae black as a countercultural fashion statement.


But then when its picked up, it goes into a defensive curl, revealing bare bands of bright red cuticle. It's another warning, but intended for birds and other predators.


The giant leopard moth caterpillar Hypercompe scribonia can be handled safely by humans. Please don't squish it, as it will change into a lovely white moth with open black spots, and hidden blue and orange colors on its abdomen. The caterpillar has as broad a taste for plants as the woolly bear, and even includes tropical and subtropical plants like banana and orange. The moth occurs from Texas to Minnesota and everything east of that, including some of the Caribbean islands.

* Very shackled good writer (Scribonia is a Roman given name and an opera character--the name suggests the meaning of good writer: Scribo + bonus; the taxonomist was almost certainly referring to the black markings on the white moth, which resemble writing.)

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."

The view of the FP zoo restaurant from behind the door to the dumpsters.


Ugly cell phone photo of a striped garden caterpillar on the hospital garage door. The half inch mesh (and the 15 squares to the inch screen) nicely measures this larva out to 1.63333333333333 inches long.

Here's half of my mushroom class from last Sunday. I'm getting less shy about saying, when my alarm goes off, "it's three o'clock, I'm going to take a picture then we should head back--if you don't want to be in the picture let me know!"

( 2 bugs one mushroom )

Morticia seems to be busying herself with something. I like to imagine she's playing with her smart phone.


Up at Stone Zoo, Cornelius has regrown his magnificent rack. The neck muscles he must have to carry that around!


I've yet to get an identification on this caterpillar found on viburnum, but I'm going to predict that it's a skipper species.

Our last stop on the vacation was the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. I was keen to see the botanical laboratories and such, not so much the big houses of two rich men I don't particularly admire. Edison was a ruthless capitalist and elephant electrocutor and Ford was a noted anti-Semite. We saw some cool stuff there though--check out the tree behind this statue of Edison.

I made sure to show my dad the Oatmeal strip about Tesla, after we got back, just so you know.
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Settin' a spell after doing some yard work and playing with dogs and such. For the beer fans, I'm drinking a Sierra Nevada Summerfest.

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Striped garden caterpillar Trichordestra legitima

I've complained about common names several times before on this blog, but it's hard to quibble with this one. I found this caterpillar while we were tearing down our vegetable garden for the fall. When I picked it up, it curled into a defensive position, and when I showed it to Alexis she initially mistook it for a striped garden snail. The resemblance was so close that I wondered if it was a case of mimicry, but it turns out this is a native caterpillar, and it is unlikely to have evolved a likeness to a European snail. More likely the curling helps face that lateral yellow stripe at potential predators to convince them that the larva is not edible.

This caterpillar's taste are extremely broad: while in that section of our yard it may have been eating bean plants, violets, goldenrod, aster, cherry, or raspberry. The adult is medium sized brown and gray moth that would have been really frustrating to try to identify, and then more so to learn that the species is named for the larva.

Here are two photos that don't fit into any of my specific projects.


A funnel-weaving grass spider ignores a caterpillar that has fallen into the web. Not vibrating enough? Too big to handle (unlikely, I've seen them grab big grasshoppers)? Some kind of caterpillar defensive chemical? I did not supply the prey this time, the scene is how I found it.


This is the fruiting body of a fungus called Claviceps, growing on a wild grass fruit. I have not encountered this before, so it's pretty exciting. The most famous member of the Genus is C. purpurea which feeds on rye and other cultivated grasses, and causes the disease Ergotism. Among other unpleasant symptoms such as gangrene, ergotism sufferers may experience mania, psychosis, and hallucinations. Some writers have blamed various historical outbreaks of mass hysteria on the fungal disease.

Weather is especially unpredictable if you are an ant. Sometimes it's brightly sunny, but it's raining very heavily anyway!


Sometimes it also rains winter moth caterpillars, and these are delicious presents for the queen and the brood.