Creature Feature...

Creature Feature: An American Dagger Moth, Peek-a-boo the black squirrel and Sniffy.

I rescued this American Dagger Moth caterpillar out of the pond yesterday. He was barely holding his head above water. I scooped him out and placed him in the flower bed on a nice green leaf in the sunshine to dry out. About a hour later my husband and I were sitting on the porch swing for our evening quiet-time together and here comes the caterpillar over the edge of the top step, across the porch and headed straight for us. So I scooped him up again and put him back down in the bed. I snapped this photo of him making his way back up on the porch for the second time.
My husband said "Great, now we have squirrels and caterpillars bugging us on the porch!"
The squirrels sometimes get a little to close to our bare toes... they do look very much like peanuts you know.

This is what the caterpillar will look like after he meta morphs.... not so cute.
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This is Peek-a-boo... Peeky for short. A female black squirrel that I've been feeding and getting to know all summer. She now comes to the door, peeks in the windows and takes peanuts by hand. She's a tad jumpy and fights with Sniffy. Because Sniffy thinks she's the Queen and well she is.

And here is dear Old Sniffy, She's doing well in spite of a little grudge about Peeky moving in on her territory. She took a peanut for the road, climbed a pole and crossed the street via the wire. I prefer her to use this route then to dash out into the street with the speeding cars. Sniffy has one baby that stayed and lives in our tree still. The male squirrel Jasper. He's really cute and has a super long tail. He's finially figured out that he can get peanuts from the porch. He'll come up the steps and wait for me to toss one down to him. But Sniffy chases him away too. Bad momma!

Here's Sniffy and Peeky working out a peanut deal.