One of the stated aspirations of this blog remains posting the best natural history photo from my daily rounds and, usually, the shot is pretty darn good, if I say so myself. Since this image, I'm fully willing to admit, doesn't really measure up to my best images—for one thing, it's not in very good focus—why am I offering it up? It's not, I add by way of explanation, as a grudging admission that maybe, just maybe, my hands are no longer as steady as they used to be, however true that might be. It's more that this shot is the best I have of an insect that, when I first encountered it on my nighttime foray, I didn't even know was an insect. I thought it might be an odd kind of thorn. And that, of course, is the point of this critter, a member of the vast insect order Hemiptera, a.k.a. the Real Bugs, that masquerades as something else. It's known as a Treehopper, and it goes through its brief adult life disguised as a thorn. I've had a wonderful time tracking down its identity through BugGuide.com, and, as near as I can determine, it falls in the Treehopper genus Glossonotus. Just what I need... another identification challenge. Actually, it's always what I need!