Devil on the Move

The ironweed was in bloom, and a Pleasing Picture-winged Ant Lion paused for its portrait on September 5, 2022. Fairies exist! If you ever see one fly, you'll believe it. These insects fly like they're doing it for the first time, suspended half-vertically, beating those lovely pictured wings madly...they look like someone impersonating a dragonfly, and doing it very badly. Oh they are so special! 

 If it kind of snaps your neck to go back nearly a year to September 2022, it does that to me, too. But now I have to tell  you the rest of the story of the hickory horned devil I protected in the summer of 2022.  I can't say I raised it; the persimmon tree did that; I just covered it with a huge fine mesh sleeve to keep the braconid wasps and tachinid flies from parasitizing it. Here it is, in situ, with the sleeve open for photography. You'll have to click on the photo to see it very well.

The caterpillar was undergoing some dramatic color changes as it grew, and grew, and grew. 

Let's have a close look at the amazing gripperdoodle at the stern of this beast.

It reminded me of a silicone potholder, the way it folded over the twig and fastened with something akin to Velcro, ensuring the massive caterpillar would not fall to its death. 

My caterpillar guru Tami Gingrich told me that when it turned color to a pale and vibrant turquoise, it would begin the wandering phase, and indeed it did, ceasing to eat and walking all over its enclosure. This is the stage at which most people find hickory horned devils walking around, looking for a place to dig into the earth. I was bemused to see one make the newspapers that same month. I can't think of anything more newsworthy than seeing this creature gallumphing down a sidewalk.

Figuring it was at its largest and heaviest, and knowing it would eat no more, I weighed it to see where it topped out, on September 5, 2022.

It's about 22 gm, almost an ounce. 

Let's put that in perspective. 

It weighs as much as a fat adult big brown bat (22 gm)! 

Almost twice as much as a chipping sparrow (12gm)! 

More than a junco, or an orchard oriole (both 19 gm)!

You get the idea. It's a Very Large Caterpillar.

But it is soon to become something entirely other. 

Throwback Thursday: Remember That Hickory Horned Devil?

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...

Phoebe is 27!

It's 3 AM in La Gomera, so I'm going to post this at 10 pm Ohio time, so you'll have it when you wake up. 

It’s a time of reflection, Phoebe, as I watch you  beating your wings so hard, taking off. You’re strong enough to fly over the ocean to the Canary Islands, all by yourself. 

 One minute, it seems, I’m watching you clomping your way down the back stairs in pink heels, Mardi Gras beads, and nothing else, announcing, “I yam a pancess!” and the next you and I are talking in a nervous, excited yet tentative way about what actually constitutes a wedding ceremony. Pomp and circumstance, ceremony and ritual. It’s your birthday, my sweet beautiful girl; you’re an ocean away, and I’m feeling verklempt.

The other day  I found a box full of old photos that never made it to the digital realm. Some real doozies in there. Here, when you were still small enough to fit in a backpack, and I was half the woman I am now, and we’d go adventuring through the woods.

 The autumn of this year, we were coming down into the Chute when we put up a ruffed grouse practically from underfoot. GROUSE! I exclaimed, then turned around to see your one-tooth grin, your wet chin, and I heard one of your very first words: “Gowse!

 More adventures, this one at The Wilds, an endangered species breeding facility near Caldwell, Ohio. It was a cold but sunny winter day when Daddy trained the old Kowa scope on a tall metal pole barn far, far away, and a reticulated giraffe stuck its head out of the door. We put you on the eyepiece without saying a word and asked you what you could see. “Gaff!!” you exclaimed. Here's the moment you saw your first live Gaff.

Yep, mai, I saw it. It was a gaff. Now Daddy lookin at it.

  Summer in Granny’s backyard, playing with a sprinkler. 

 Studio fun time, painting your belly bread when Mai wasn't looking.

 And now look at you, and look at sweet Oscar; you’re like staring at twin suns. One hardly knows where to focus, you’re both so beautiful and alive and in love.

 He, barely able to hold the food he’s grown on the small patch of earth high on a terrace above his Canarian home; that boy’s got mangoes and passionfruit, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, eggs and papayas by the armload. There’s nothing he can’t grow, nothing he can’t do. And I'm still trying to figure out what that feather is he's wearing. Sparrowhawk?

 He’s bought a car and learned to drive it; he’s learned English; he’s ready for the big leap, and still we all wait for the US Embassy to catch up and grant him permission to come over. It will happen. And you both have been more than patient, as they took a year to even touch your application. You've made the best of it, seeing each other whenever you can, filling those too-short times with memories for the ages. Oscar is your rock.

And now we're talking weddings. Sometimes I'm grateful for the slowdown. It's all happening so fast, at least for this one who lives like a box turtle, tucked away in an Ohio meadow.

 

I walk among the wildflowers, thinking about which week in the summer would be best for a wedding of two people I love so much. This one. No, this one. Wait. Mid-August is so special. But mid-July...I just don't know. Could we bottle this July, please, and uncork it in a couple of years?

 

I walk toward home and tears begin to fall, thinking about it, the enormity and the beauty of it, the big

 and the very, very small of it.

I think about how we got here and all that has happened, all that will happen and then the tears come again. And the rosinweed blossoms nod, knowing. 

                   Happy birthday, my beautiful bird.  The endless waiting to begin your real, true life is almost over. It's flying toward us even now.