Location Taken: Crownsville, Maryland
Time Taken: October 2010

I had a visitor on the day I brought my camera to the Renaissance Festival to take pictures of where I work. A little white caterpillar, investigating this interesting cart with this odd human standing right next to it.

It wandered up the side of the cart, then down into the interior of it, where I keep all the ices I sell, as well as such things as the napkins I serve the ices on, and my purse. It was checking out my purse when I pulled out the camera during a slow point of the day. I let it wander around for a bit longer, then I grabbed one of the napkins, let it crawl onto said napkin, then gently let it off at a nearby tree, away from the pounding feet of the busy path my cart is next to.

This fuzzy visitor appears to be a young moth caterpillar, of the species Charadra deridens, also known as The Laugher. Yes, really, The Laugher. The adult moth has a complex mottled pattern for camouflage that, at least according to those who named it, looks like someone laughing. I’m not seeing it, in any of the photos I’ve looked at, but maybe you will.

I actually get a lot of insectoid visitors to my cart. It is outside, at the edge of a forest, about three miles from a large estuary off the Chesapeake Bay (technically itself an estuary). It’s a very good area for bugs to live in.

Some are quite welcome, like this caterpillar and the occasional preying mantis. I’m fond of preying mantises, and was really happy the day one decided to stay on my cart for a few hours, plenty of time for me to get a few sketches between customers (I didn’t have my camera that day). Others I have a live-and-let-live attitude. The local bees, which seem to be honey bees (most likely escaped from the hive outside the Bee Folks shop near my cart), love exploring my cart, following the sweet scent of the flavored ices I sell. When they visit, I keep the cooler closed so they can’t get in, and otherwise don’t shoo them off or anything. I’ve worked around these bees for years without being stung, even though I’ve had them land on me (one even landed on my nose!). As long as you don’t startle them by, say, flailing around trying to swat them or chase them off, they won’t hurt you. There’s also a few bugs I chase off or kill. Spiders I’ll evict, moving them off the cart, and I’ll kill ants, since they’re too numerous to relocate and I don’t want them to get in the ices.

I generally like having the insects visit. It’s one of the things that keeps me entertained when I’m standing around selling things for 8 hours in a row, much of it spent just watching the people and world around me. It’s always nice when the world comes to me.

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