It's not particularly easy to convince a caterpillar to pose to have his portrait taken. My subject spent about five minutes in defense posture before concluding I wasn't planning to eat him, and then another five minutes warming up enough to move. I then took this photo of a woolly bear's eye view of the world; thorax raised in defiance of the vast distances between he and...I don't know what. He's currently inspecting the area around my trashcan quite thoroughly, perhaps in search of a place to over winter.
For those of you who may be wondering, the woolly bear is actually the larval stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth. They over-winter by producing a biological antifreeze in their tissue. So when you find one in your garden mid-December, don't throw the carcass away assuming the sorry thing couldn't cocoon in time for frost, he's just cryogenically frozen. In summer, he will look like this, provided my blue birds don't get to him first.
Sorry for a post of such utter nonsense.
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