Wooly Bear Prognostication

This is a Wooly Bear, a variety of caterpillar seen briefly at this time of year. They are black on the ends and brown in the middle. The length of the black ends relative to the brown middle tells you how severe the winter will be. These fellas seem to a bit more on the brownish side than usual, so I think they are predicting a somewhat milder winter, but since I haven’t been up to the country exactly at Wooly Bear-spotting time for many years, I don’t really have a good control against which to gauge this little guy. I see that he has more black at one end—this might mean that the early part of the winter will be more severe—or maybe the late part. The important thing is that Wooly Bears in my experience have been consistently accurate. I think their predictions only work for the immediate area, though.