Little Bang Theory

In The Rain. August 6, 2011

I spent the morning being productive at the homestead, then headed out on errands and noodling, as is my wont.  I thought I might find interesting light and, after taking care of the necessities, headed down to the Chesterfield Gorge.

But by the time I got there it had begun to rain, and the light was flat as a pancake.

C’est la vie.

Of course I shouldered a bag and went to have a look anyway, and found this:

A Polyphemus moth caterpillar, I concluded after doing a brief web search.  Feel free to correct me if you know differently.

I didn’t have Ziggy, my 50mm macro lens with me, and shot this with Ollie zoomed to 105mm, then cropped it hard; the resulting image is sufficient for web use but will never deserve to be printed.

Still, it’s a fun shot to look at; old Mop-face there looks highly irregular to this mammal, and I had to coax it onto my hand to lower it for this shot – when I first saw it, it was head-high on a maple tree and upward bound at impressive speed, and if I hadn’t managed to lower it I would never have gotten the photo.

But man, it was creepy holding it – between how its suction feet glommed around my fingers to the perhaps irrational fear that it would bite me (don’t I know anything? )

🙂