I knew it would be a mistake not to write about these photos when I uploaded them. September being what it is, I never found the time. My good readers will recall that much of the summer of 2022 was spent fussing over one enormous worm, protected by a fine mesh sleeve on my open-grown persimmon tree: the HICKORY HORNED DEVIL!!
I think everybody overloaded on HH Devil last summer, so it's really fun to go back and see them now, when these huge caterpillars aren't even a gleam in their parents' compound eyes.
Let's shoot back to September, when the orange-striped oakworms were defoliating my beloved little mailbox oak. (They're not gonna do that again! It was TOTAL.)
And I discovered brown-eyed Susans Rudbeckia triloba--blooming long after the classic black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta, is done--on a roadside bank--Lawd, how beautiful!
and the Conoclinium coelestinum (Mistflower, wild ageratum) was in full bloom in the orchard.
There's about 3x as much this year, thanks to intelligent mowing! I absolutely adore this spreading native perennial. It can just spread all over the clearing at the orchard's end, as far as I'm concerned. Butterflies and bees love it, and so do I.
It was September 2, and I found the first wild persimmon on the ground, and it was sweet and edible!
Something not sweet nor edible: the gargantuan frass (poop) of a Very Large Caterpillar.
By Sept. 3, it was very, very big, as big as it was going to get.
Click on the photo to enjoy its black silk stockings, and the way the claspers wrap around the twig.
It feels like a cool, velvety hotdog to hold.
Sept. 3, Shila came out to photograph this wonder. Don't miss the worm...it's right in front of her phone lens, hanging upside down. Huge. YOOOOGE.
I can't span it with my hand. It's 6 3/4" long.
The worm had become so used to being photographed and moved this way and that, that I had trouble getting it to show me its Ray-Bans any more.
I literally had to tickle the tubular being into displaying its terrifying false eyes.
More stockings...the caterpillar clings like its life depends on it, and indeed it does. Being so huge and heavy, a fall from high in a tree would spell death; it'd split like a ripe melon.
We aren't going to let it fall. It's cushioned in its parasitic wasp-proof mesh sleeve, anyway.
And the custodian comes every few days to empty out handfuls of its frass to keep things
nice and clean.
Absolutely fantastic blue. I have a Specialized bike helmet exactly this color.
Yes, we'd become very fond of our terrifying but utterly harmless Devil,
and I don't think it minded us one bit.
Changes soon to come for this creature! I've saved these last few posts from September and October 2022 until I knew what would become of our colorful, horned friend. Stay tuned...
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