Dear Readers,

Yesterday I was outside perusing my newly refreshed gardens, which surround the front, side, and back of my house, daydreaming about what types of perennials I could plant to attract more pollinators.

While thinking about milkweed, wild geraniums, wild columbine, and plants whose names I’ve yet to learn, something on the siding caught my eye. It was a caterpillar — like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Adhering to my policy of not touching insects or critters, for both their safety and mine, I left it alone. But I did run back into my house to grab my camera, which also doubles as my phone. I snapped a few pictures, and submitted one of them to my iNaturalist app. The results were simply stated as “unknown.”

To me the caterpillar looks like something one of my young grandkids would engineer out of odd pieces of Legos or draw and color on a blank sheet of paper, producing something otherworldly and fantastical, but in no way realistic.

So, I am asking if any of my readers knows what type of caterpillar this is and what it turns into.

Thanks!