This is Bobby the woolly bear caterpillar! My sister and I found him when we were at the beach last week and he was just so cute and fluffy looking that we had to take a bunch of pictures of him (and name him Bobby). He is actually pretty pissed in this picture. I think he didn’t like the flash… Sorry Bobby… But you were moving too much for me to take the picture without a flash! :-/
Anyway, it turns out that many people think you can predict what your winter will be like by looking at the stripes on a woolly bear caterpillar! Apparently, the fatter the brown stripe, the milder the winter will be. In fact, there are many woolly bear festivals across the eastern US where people celebrate the coming of winter with these little guys (Here’s a link to one of the bigger festivals). In North Carolina, they even have a caterpillar race. The caterpillar that wins the race is then used to predict the winter weather. Looks like Bobby’s predicting a fairly mild winter…