First Day in the Field at Honey Island Swamp

Today was our first day looking for caterpillars. Our researcher, Rebecca, showed us lots of pictures of caterpillars and taught us to look for leaves with bites out of them. She told us to put the caterpillars we found into a plastic bag. We couldn't touch them because lots of them sting, so we had to use a stick to get them in the bag. We also had to pick leaves from the plant and put them in the plastic bag so the caterpillar had something to eat. After our lesson, we rode in vans to the Honey Island Swamp. The Pearl River is flooding right now so we had to walk instead of drive to our collection area.

All the teachers started looking for caterpillars along a road. We had to watch out for poison ivy and fire ants. Several teachers found caterpillars right away. I looked and looked, but couldn't find a single one. Everyone else spotted some immediately. After examining many trees and plants, I noticed what I thought was a very large caterpillar underneath some leaves. It was resting on a branch. I started to get closer, but stopped and called another teacher over to take a look. Was it a caterpillar? Before I got too close, the other teacher identified it as a baby copperhead snake. Yikes! Everyone was very excited because no one had seen a baby one in a tree before. The snake was beautiful, but full of venom. I was very glad that I had gone slowly or I might have been bitten. We left the baby copperhead in its tree and just took its picture. I didn't find a caterpillar today, but will try harder tomorrow.