Monster Mash

Looks harmless, right?

When I walked into my home office on Halloween morning, the above is what I saw on the top window. At first, I figured it was a leaf or some dirt kicked up by the heavy rains pelting Houston at that time.

But then I stared at the distinctive, pointy, bottom part. Oh oh . . . definitely looks like an unfortunately familiar tail.

But it’s not! (That’s its slime around it, by the way.)

So I put my Nikon 105mm macro lens on my Nikon D700 and closed in on the blob (I had to use flash to overcome the strong backlighting).

Those spines are poisonous (snapped outside the house on the window).

Yep, just as I suspected, it was an awful asp, one of the most-toxic caterpillars in North America. As you may recall, we had about a half-dozen of the deceptively warm, furry, micro mustaches crawling on our light-colored house a year ago.

This time I’ve only seen Angus (yes, I named him for some reason), and he’s far from our front door, thank goodness. But still, even just one asp definitely is a trick, not a treat!