Little Blake Lake

We "knew" ahead of time that Saturday would be a mostly rainy day. That's why Nan brought work with ther and I brought a big book.

While there was time to talk to Larry and Dixie and to Mark and Susan and Will, we rather enjoyed our inability to do chores. And near sunset, we had a rainbow in our yard! (I don't know if I want to dig for a pot of gold there though. That's right above the septic tank.)



When the sun finally set, it poked out from behind the clouds and highlighted the hummingbird feeder.



Sunday morning dawned bright and quiet.

Photo by Nancy Ashmore

As I was finishing my book, a guest dropped in. Literally dropped in.



I heard this loud "PLOP" on the deck and when I looked up there was a 2-inch long green caterpillar. It didn't move for awhile. Perhaps it was stunned by its fall from the tree. Was the fall intentional? Had it missed a swinging vine? Did it have visions of flying as a butterfly?

After awhile, it began moving. Crawling toward the edge of the deck. I went out and took a close up of the front end.



There seems to be a mouth and eyes.

[Turns out its a Luna moth caterpillar. I learned this from Bill Hilton's Hilton Pond Center web site, which I found by searching for green caterpillar on Google. Coincidence? Serendipity? Bill Hilton, Jr. is a good friend of my good friend Jim Shuman who chairs the education department at St. Lawrence University in New York. Bill once left a dead bird in my freezer. (He borrowed my apartment for awhile when he was in Minneapolis and I was in Wisconsin being an archaeologist.)]

Besides the good book, the Luna moth caterpiller was as fun to see as the eagles, the loon, and the hummingbirds we saw. There were also these long-legged, long-beaked birds I saw in profile (the rising sun was behind them). I don't know what they were and I really don't know why they were perched in a tree. Shouldn't they have been wading along the shore?

Great weekend. I think we'll do it again in a couple weeks. Have to figure out what to do about the dead lawn mower at home.

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