About Face (4)

This is a category that I haven’t reawakened in some two and a half years, but a close encounter a couple of weeks ago urged me to pick up the thread again. It is dedicated to my imagination, which sometimes permits me to think I can see the likeness of a face in some aspect of the natural world.  And, as I said, it’s been some time since I found one.  We have a sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata) that grows up the post on which our mailbox perches, and if we don’t trim it back occasionally, it would engulf the whole structure. Insects love the flowers (as do we), and I often stand next to it and study its depths to see what new visitor might have decided to spend some time there. I spied this little moth a few inches in from the outermost blossoms and hoped it would wait for me to fetch my camera and tripod.  It turned out to be a patient one and it was still there when I returned, and remained so while I spent a happy quarter of an hour trying to see how close I could get before it became uncomfortable with my proximity. But even when I was within quite intimate macro range, I didn’t notice what resembled a face on its dorsal thorax—this didn’t happen until I was check- ing extreme zooms to pick out the most detailed of several similar shots that I’d made in a series while waiting for absolute absence of the breeze that was causing the flowers to bob and weave around. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the one on the death’s head moth that appears on the poster for the film Silence of the Lambs, but quite a bit more gentle and, at the same time, definitely more alien-looking. What do you think? (If you click on the About Face category, you will be able to see my three previous posts on the subject.) I’m sorry, but I don’t know the moth’s name.  Anyone?

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