WTF Is This

I’ve always heard them called skeeter eaters too! I was so disappointed when I learned they don’t actually eat mosquitoes.

 

they look like they should, don't they?

 

Spoiler: Another offering of weird bug

 

can't like, promise anything, but I look at that and think "tick!!" so, caution?

 

That is not a tick at all. Some kind of weevil. Too blurry to nail down specific species.

 

I retract my initial reaction, then; this sounds much more plausible.

 

It's a scent diffuser! You put some scented oil in the pan and cover it and turn it on and it disperses it in a steam. Spas use them a lot, and lotsa people own home ones these days.

That little one is most likely for personal use, and I doubt it'd work well even for a small room.

Edit: I take back what I said, it'd probably be enough in a bathroom

 

I found a little spider I didn't recognize while cleaning yesterday. It got tossed outside out of respect for resident arachnophobes and I foolishly did not take a picture.

It was pretty small with a very round body less than a centimeter across. Very shiny black with three yellow triangles pointing towards the head in a line like |>|>|>○

I'm in Toronto, Ontario, but looking up local spiders hasn't been too helpful.

 

was it scrunched up like a jumping spider, or loosey-goosey? bc it might be Phidippus audax, which is all over the US and southern canada. the pics on wikipedia have orangey-red triangles, but they can be yellow or white too

 

got another bug friend here, or at least I think it’s a friend. looks like a tomato hornworm caterpillar but browner, spinier, and leaf-patterned. I know it has to be the caterpillar of some kind of sphinx moth but I’m not sure which one? I’m in Maine and it is hornworm season, though afaik we haven’t actually found any of the bastards on our tomatoes.

Spoiler: glamour shots

 

I've no idea what that is but it's so Cute

 

it is!! and it’ll be even better when it grows up - idk if you’ve ever seen a sphinx moth, but they’re basically hummingbirds but with 6 legs and proboscises, I love watching them zoom around.

 

update: looks like it was an elm sphinx caterpillar! here’s what the adult will look like:

 

Cross posted from animal sightings. Does anyone know what kind of frog this is? Found near a river on the Georgia/Tennessee border

 

I'm thinking its a toad from the prominent glands and drier looking skin.
Anaxyrus americanus Maybe?

 

It appears to have parotoid glands, which to my knowledge none of the native or introduced frog species in that area have obvious external glands. It also appears drier than the frogs in that area and the hind (jumping) legs appear too small for a frog. I too thought leopard frog at first, but it's lacking almost every distinctive feature of a leopard frog and the body shape is completely wrong. Where as this guy could be a dead ringer for our mystery amphibian save for more warts, but Seth's pic is dark and low quality, so it could simply be obscuring the bumpies.

 

I’ve been doing some research on the boy, and he’s most similar looking to a Fowler’s Toad. Oddly smooth and symmetrical, but he has the same light stripe, dark spots, and stripy legs. The range is right, too, and the site I checked mentioned they sometimes appeared after heavy rain. We’d had a hell of a storm earlier that day.

Spoiler: The boy in question