The fuzzy little caterpillar

Note: I wrote this post Friday afternoon, and had meant to post it in the evening once I had a chance to get my picture from phone to computer. No dice. First chance I’ve had is today, which means you get to do a little time travel. Set your clock back to Friday afternoon around 3, and read on.

I am up too late; the constellations are different than when I’m usually out. And I’m a nerd for noticing.

That’s what my tweet was at about 3 this morning; I’d gone outside at a little after 2:30 and thought, Holy crap! Is that Orion rising?! (I usually notice the Summer Triangle and Cassiopeia most prominently in the sky at this time of year.) And then I listened to about an hour’s worth of podcasts after that before I managed to fall asleep. One of them had a little astronomy segment that mentioned — you guessed it — Orion. And so I felt it was fine, almost that it should have happened that way.

I woke up this morning shortly after 9, having been nearly trampled to death by one of the cats. She was hungry, and had gone probably a whopping 30 minutes without something in the food dish, because I remember feeding them before I went to bed. Cats.

After cleaning out a cupboard and doing a little catbox maintenance, I decided to head to the City Park. On a whim, I took the turn to drive up to Clark Tower, a three-story stone structure built in 1926. (Thank you, Google and Wikipedia. I’m not good with my county history.) I sat on a large rock and pulled out pen and paper (a purple Liquid Espresso pen and one of the pocket size Moleskine cahiers that I always carry around), intending to sketch a little, which I haven’t done in a very long time. I’d just started — the curve of the railing was the only thing on my paper at the moment — when I felt a little tickle on my leg.

I looked down before I tried to brush whatever it was off, and saw a fuzzy, pale grey caterpillar with funny little black tufts at either end. I tried flicking the cuff of my shorts, hoping to unseat the little bugger, but it only held on tighter and crawled to where I couldn’t see it. I stood up to be able to see it again and, after much persuasion, got it on the end of my pen, and stared it in what I thought were its eyes.

Having been attempting to identify a large, green caterpillar* the other day, I didn’t want to touch it, because I’d read plenty about stinging caterpillars. After a moment, I let it crawl onto the tree that was behind the rock, and it bolted up the trunk. (Seriously, it was very fast for such a little guy.) I did a quick (and very rough) sketch of it before it escaped, and took a couple of blurry pictures with my phone.

This crawly critter really tickles when it's trying to crawl up your pants.

When I left the park, I decided to get my Google on and figure out what that fuzzy little guy was. One of the first links I clicked on was not encouraging: Morningjoy ended up with a swollen hand after accidentally touching a fuzzy caterpillar, one not too unlike my own. I knew it wasn’t quite right and continued my search until I came across Halysidota tessellaris on BugGuide. (After What’s That Bug, BugGuide is my go-to insect identification site.) Halysidota tessellaris is better known as the banded tussock moth; if you look at the Wikipedia entry, you’ll see the pretty colors on the thorax and the tessellation-like pattern on the wings. I looked at a couple of other sites, and was inconclusive as to whether this was a stinging caterpillar (though I hear the rule “if it’s fuzzy, it stings” is correct most of the time). I haven’t noticed any red marks or swelling, so I think this one’s safe.

* I think it was either some sort of sphinx or swallowtail.