Critters and Kettle Corn

We had one of those lay low days that one can sometimes enjoy after a trip. Sort of the vacation from your vacation. That was us yesterday.

We didn’t eat “brunch” till 1:30! Eggs, fresh-grated hash-browns, and bacon. What a feast! I didn’t eat much of anything the rest of the day. As Grandma used to say, we were lazy bones.

It was a grey and gloomy day that anticipated rain. It finally showed up around 5:00 or so and fell steady all evening. I came out to the camper so I could listen to the raindrops on the roof. It’s a lovely way to sleep.

It was almost 11:00pm when I gathered my things to come out to the camper and write my post. I got to the steps going down into the family room when I thought we had carried a wet leaf in from the yard. I bent down to get a closer look and saw it was an uninvited houseguest in the form of an Eastern Newt. I placed a plastic container over him, slid a piece of heavy card paper under him and carried him outside. I’m sure he would much rather be out there in the rain and mud than dehydrating on our carpet.

The other critters are a Green Tree Cricket. Without it arching his wings to serenade a lady tree cricket, I couldn’t tell for sure…but it may have been a Snowy Tree Cricket. For those of you may watch Big Bang Theory, there was an episode where the boys caught a cricket in their apartment. Howard thought it was a common field cricket but Sheldon insisted it was a Snowy Tree Cricket. They took it to the Entomology Professor (who was retiring to Oxnard. And not the Oxnard at the beach! No, he was going to Oxnard in the godforsaken onion fields!) He confirmed, it was a plain old ordinary field cricket.

But, I digress.

The third critter photo is what we grew up calling a Wooly Worm or Wooly Bear Caterpillar. Appalachian folklore says that all black indicates a particularly harsh and cold winter. Now, I can’t accurately attest to that because this little lady is actually a Giant Leopard Moth caterpillar and not the standard Isabella Tiger Moth caterpillar that folklore talks about. Eh…apples and oranges. It really doesn’t matter. The National Weather Service has been warning of a long cold winter with heavy snows due to a particularly strong El Niño this year so I’ll say that the caterpillar knows what she’s talking about.

The last picture is a whole tree full of Turkey Tail fungus. They grow on dead or dying trees. There are lookalike mushrooms out there that mimic the TurkeyTail that are harmful, so unless you are a trained Mycologist, just take pictures and leave this stuff alone.

That’s it for now. I hope it gently rains all day! And I hope you are safe from any bad storms.

Till tomorrow, dear ones…

Ginny

““ ‘Of the animals that move along the ground, these are unclean for you: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon.”
‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭11‬:‭29‬-‭30‬ ‭NIV‬‬

#turkeytailmushroom #treecricket #EasternNewt #wooly #bear #woolybear #caterpillar











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