Beware the walking stick
 

Breakfast is served!

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Good! I hate those caterpillars!

We have lots of those around here also. (WS)
Cool insects!

Queue the " jaws " theme music as the stick gets closer to the kill 😁

Herbivores

Yes

No walking sticks here that I've seen, but for the past two weeks my house has been a Hitchcock with those fargin caterpillars.

We've got far too many of those Tussock Moth Caterpillars here. We also have a few of some other that's not hairy. I was doing the live and let live thing with the caterpillars at first, but I stopped that at least a week ago. Now I go on daily or multiple daily sweeping/killing raids. There seems to be one tree that has most of them in our yard, and that's the one that's closest to the house/porch.

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The good news is that the numbers seem to be decreasing. I'm hoping they are going to the next stage of development.

Yikes. All those caterpillars all over the place would give me the heebie jeebies.

We have some milkweed planted in a large pot. Every few months we get a batch of caterpillars which we watch get fat. Fortunately they keep contained to the plant, as it's the only thing they eat. Some turn into chrysallis' and eventually Monarchs. It's a neat little science class all in our front yard.

Tussock moths...those are the nasty critters than decimated Eastern Oregon forests some decades back. For a kill. spray the tree with something sold in most organic gardening shops, called "BT". It bacterial...if they eat a leaf with it, they develop a fatal belly ache. Harmless to pets or humans.

Don't mess with them. Touching those top two can cause an allergic reaction. Tussock Moth caterpillar.

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At first I thought it was a tread about these things. The insect ones don't worry me.

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This was on our sidewalk.....some sort of dragonfly?
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Good to know, thanks.

Yep, dragon fly.
I'm guessing, common white tail, female or juvenile which have less white than the males.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._whitetail.jpg


http://www.eih.uh.edu/content/02-about/01-species/uhcc-odonta-scott-clark.pdf

I hate these guys

http://brookerpestcontrol.com/wp-con...-mole-full.jpg

Ugly ugly mole cricket

Kill them! With FIRE!!! http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...ys/mgwhore.gif

I have fished with these dudes. They can be nearly 4" long.
hellgrammites larvae (water born)http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1619317465.jpg

They turn into this, Dobsonfly

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1619317535.jpg

Fortunately, you should rarely see them since they are almost always underground. I used to play with them when I found them. Their front legs are strong, presumably because those are their digging legs.

Those are ugly bugs!

They are ugly and big.

Last year my lady neighbor came over in a panic. She had a dobsonfly on the side of her house and was scared of the thing. I picked it up and chased her around the yard with it.

I used to find these, fortunately dead, in the control panels and wiring raceways in Pakistan.

https://tailandfur.com/wp-content/up...he-World-9.jpg

These are great for lower back injury.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j6fPKSPm2Q...king-stick.jpg

When I worked on the superintendents crew at a golf course, they were bad news on several greens. We would first spray the green with soapy water, wait until they came out of their hole, then mow them down. It was pretty fun actually.

We had these Meloe blister beetles destroying our garden one year. Nasty. Found out they release oily droplets of hemolymph from their joints if you mess with them. It contains canthariden, a poisonous chemical that causes blisters and painful swelling.
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(shudder)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1619364191.jpg

Jerusalem Cricket! Funny, enough, this is actually my photo, taken outside the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where I used to work.

Keep the awesome bugs coming!

Your friendly Pelican entomologist,
Mike

More critters from this weekend.

I assume the second and third are the same kind of caterpillar.
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I'd love to know what's making these holes. I have several in a certain area of the yard. From what I've been able to find, Cicada's don't make holes like this with the pile of dirt, I assume, because they come from below. The pile of dirt seems to mostly be associated with things that dig from above. It's too small (and we're currently too dry) for it to be crawfish. I'm guessing it may be cicada killer wasps or maybe some sort of solitary ground bee. I'm not sure. I'm not seeing or hearing any cicadas, I don't think, so I wouldn't think it'd be the wasps since they probably come out when the cicadas are around. That's the tip of my pinky, so the hole's not very big.
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