Here's another episode in the "joys of sticking close to home" series, the one mandated by work and family situations. I'd been writing, productively but not exactly happily, all the beautiful-weather morning and finally took a break to poke my head outdoors in the mid-afternoon when my wife Pam came in to request help with an ID. The mystery critter was a remarkably fast-moving caterpillar with an equally remarkable sense of style... punk style, from the looks of it. I knew it was a kind of Tussock Moth—the Mohawk-like tufts in front are a giveaway—and when I started leafing through Dave Wagner's Caterpillars of Eastern North America, I learned, probably relearned, that the critter belonged to the Lymantriidae family, which makes it a cousin of the much-loathed and, thankfully, recently mass-deceased Gypsy Moth. According to Dave, the UConn entomologist who has served, happily, I hope, as my de facto mentor in matters of caterpillars and odonates, this speedy larvae, who charged up our steps, is a White-marked Tussock youngster, a.k.a. Orgyia leucostigma. The adolescent, Dave writes, is "one of our most ubiquitous caterpillars—it could turn up on virtually any woody plant in the East." The biologist doesn't include wooden steps in his list of savored dietary items, so I hope the Tussock can find its way back to the plants.