Critters

This little guy took advantage of a warm November evening to climb the glass in my kitchen door.

Young John Etters of Putnam County, New York, phoned the newspaper to report that he had found a six-legged frog. Indeed he had. In researching the story I wrote to go with the picture I learned that they aren't all that rare, though most die at an early age -- they're easy prey.

Some years, infestations are worse than others. The caterpillars can strip whole forests.

No one who grows tomatoes is happy to see a tomato horn worm -- unless it looks like this one. Those white things are the cocoons of the braconid wasp, which will grow to adulthood by consuming the worm (itself the larva of the sphinx moth). Such tomato worms are best left alone, to be the nursery for the little wasps.

I have no way of knowing the proper name of this little inch-long arachnid, but I was much taken with how closely it resembles the yellowjacket hornet, and I suspect that its coloration has something to do with that miserable stringing insect.

This guy was more than three inches from leg tip to leg tip.

The name is made up. I have no idea what this georgeous insect is really called, though it is certainly a moth. Somewhere there is a tree where this moth blends in perfectly, but it wasn't there the day I took this.

A picture not as easy to take as you might think!