Spider with babies

We, Nathan, Katie, and I, weeded today in the lower valley along the watercourse. Katie found this cool spider. It didn't freak her out at all and she maneuvered it into crawling onto her glove. The first time she bumped it, baby spiders fell off. First they scattered; then then returned and climbed back aboard. Cool.

It bothers some people to realize what's living in the green growth that they've been rooting around in all day. It doesn't seem to bother Katie. I wonder some day if I'll have a moment from which I'll emerge more hesitant to weed barehanded every day. I hope not. I know since watching Jaws so many years ago, I'm not so psyched for nighttime swims in the ocean as I used to be. I used to enjoy swimming out at night until the lights on shore were distant enough to be obscured by the crests of waves. Not so much anymore.

 

Piper and Tara id a caterpillar at lunch

It's  Antheraea polyphemus, the caterpillar of the Polyphemus moth. Named, I suppose, not for the cyclops Polyphemus, but for the Argonaut. The moth has two distinctive eyespots so it wouldn't make sense to name it after a cyclops. The caterpillar is cool though. Wikipedia claims that, newly hatched, they can eat 86,000 their weight in leaves. Damn.