I found this fat, furry caterpillar, which was over two inches long, in the leaf litter, and I promptly put it in a small container to photograph it in the best possible light. It's definitely a gorgeous beast, what with its adornments of black spines sitting atop a dark skin that, at each segment, bears vibrant red—what to call them?—stretch marks? I'd seen this species before, the adolescent phase of the Giant Leopard Moth, which is also a stunner as an adult, with white wings bearing black ovals, but when my wife saw the critter, she blanched and very nearly purchased a winter-long ticket to South Carolina to stay with her sister. Pam thought she was looking at a Woolly Bear, that prognosticator of the strength and severity of the upcoming winter, and because the forecaster, which is normally black and orange—more black augurs sterner weather; more orange suggests mildness—was all-black, this was, right before her eyes, the worst of all possibilities. Happily, what we have here is a non-forecasting species.  Not to worry... until, of course, I start tallying up what the Woolly Bears have to say.