While weeding, I found a furry critter crawling through my daylilies. I have never seen this one before and came in to see if I could ID it. I brought the little critter in on a leaf and piece of paper. I think what I have is the above caterpillar. It's color first threw me off when I went to the website for Caterpillars of the Pacific Northwest (kin to Butterflies of Oregon website). It is cream, not the brown coloring of the pics I found at the site. But then I did a little googling and found the following, which says that they can be cream or "blonde". Gave me a chuckle to see the "blonde" in quotes - as if the critter weren't a true blonde! I guess only her hairdresser knows for sure. ;-) http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/fidls/tussock/fidl-tuss.htm What the site said is that during infestations they can be found on the ground, which is where I found this guy. I've never seen these before but now I'm wondering if our area is due for a large explosion (similar to what you up north are dealing with the tent caterpillars). My neighbors have a very large, very old Doug fir (they designed their house to take advantage of this beauty) and he (she?) could easily have come from this tree into my yard - it's not a long distance. Any thoughts? I'm off to see if I can figure out how to use our digital camera to try to take its pic to post later. I'm still only guessing what I have. I'm fairly unfamiliar with the ID terms for caterpillars - there aren't petals, sepals or pistils to count. ;-) Lisa Tualatin, OR
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