From Bright Wool to Soft Silk: The Isabella Moth
Down at the Flett Creek Pump Station things appear to have cooled down from the frantic motions of spring and summer. The birds are still migrating; our ospreys have taken off for Mexico weeks ago, and the rainy season is underway. For newcomers and outsiders, the Pacific Rainforest really comes into the 'great North Wet' after the scorch of summer. After a few years of observing, I've come to think of it as a secondary springtime.
Soft grey mist was coming down with the rain as I was angling to take photographs of dabbling ducks. If you're tried this activity, you'll know dabbling ducks are the 'bottoms-up' types of waterfowl, and it doesn't take long before your hopes of an award-winning shot downscales to something more plausible: Becoming famous for creating a bird ID field guide using only their tailfeathers comes to mind. At any rate my eyes were burning and it was time to take a step back and ignore the family of shovelers taking off like so many awkward bowling pins.
Stepping back put a splash of color in my vision and I looked down. Catching droplets in the rain, a fat little Isabella caterpillar Pyrrharctia isabella was marching its way across the asphalt road. Nowadays I hear them called 'woolly bears'. As a child I was introduced to them as 'woolly worms' in West Virginia, though some of us deeper the shale counties would say 'willa worms'. Study the colors, I was told, and the black would tell me how cold the winter would get. Maybe. Probably.
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That's given as gospel by a lot of people, but the fun is in the having with meeting the little fellows every year. I haven't seen the adult moth at all since moving to Pierce County, only the caterpillar. Even then I never saw them in the summer. Fall was best and as I did as a child, I fretted over their survival rate as they inched their way across the roads. With luck they finish up under the leaf-mold of the forests, sleeping until they greet spring. Their life cycle continues on here as they develop into adults; the Isabella refers to the yellowed ivory, nondescript color of their wings. I hope I've missed them all this time because I was struggling with ducks; I'd hate to think I didn't see them because they were simply not there. Perhaps in the soft beige lines of the cattails of the Flett they hide. While my sister and I had a lot of fun with them as children, we didn't know those hairs could make a sensitive person 'rash up'. If you're unfamiliar with them, rescue them gently from the road with a piece of paper or paper napkin.