be careful what you ask for

Living out in the country you get lots of opportunities for experiences you might not get as often in the city: 1) the desire to eat your words 2) the chance to see a great variety of fearsome and ferocious bugs!

The other day, admiring the photos on another blog featuring jewel-like dragon flies and may flies, I commented that bugs don't stay still enough for me to photograph. I was thinking pretty butterflies, elegant & twinkly dragon flies...

This morning, I stepped out my back door to see this. Touching it with my toe, I was rewarded with a rather loud noise like "cheech! screetch!". I have no idea what it is, thinking at first it was shaped rather like a cockroach -- which we don't see much of here. From wing-tip to tip-of-antennae, it must be over 4 cm long.

Anyone? (please tell me it's not a cockroach -- that's it's a catydid or something)
Speaking of bugs, I've been noticing a lot of tent-caterpillars on the wild cherries and apple trees. And I've noticed frass around the tomatoes, but found none of the dreaded horn-worms. There was also a lot of frass around the bronze fennel. I was on my hands and knees, weeding, so when I looked up, I saw the fennel has been ravaged!! Funny, the tomato horn-worms give me the shudders, but caterpillars like the monarch's on milkweed don't bother me at all. In fact, I kind of feel 'motherly' toward them, thinking: "oh good. more butterflies..eat away. get nice and fat..."