As I mentioned in a past post, there has been a dearth of woolly bear caterpillars in our yard. Both dedicated and casual searches have been in vain. We were ready to give it up for the season when Juana spotted a tiny creature munching on a chrysanthemum that was planted in a flower box on the side of our house.
There it was moving in a undulating fashion from flower to flower. Its uniform color of brown-orange heralds a mild winter. But could we trust this singular piece of data? Would it be any more or less accurate than the dozens of caterpillars whose varied aggregated stripes of past years promised cold or mild weather?
We didn’t care.
It is just enough to see that at least one of our favorite fall-time creatures was alive and munching away on the mums. We couldn’t ask it where were others of its sort. So we watched as it went from flower to flower and then disappeared deep into the foliage.
