There are lots of stories related to wooly bear caterpillars, those fuzzy black and brown caterpillars that we often see in fall crossing the road.

So why do they cross the road?

Well, it just so happens that wooly bear caterpillars are one of the caterpillars that over winter in the caterpillar stage So they're looking for a place to hibernate, and they have an amazing ability to produce glycerol, which allows their cells to nearly freeze solid in winter.

They find a place under logs or in a rock pile or under leaf litter, where they can be in that suspended state until spring, when they will eventually shed all their hairs called Ceti and make a cocoon and then emerge later in spring early summer as Isabela Isabela Tiger Moth.

So lots of other stories are related to these cute fuzzy caterpillars, many that revolve around whether or not they can predict the severity of winter.

Some stories say that the amount of brown on the caterpillar shows us whether or not the winter will be very, very cold or not.

So much, the more brown, the milder the winter.

Well, it really is just folklore.

And what we know about wooly bear caterpillars is that as the caterpillar ages, it sheds its skin five times.

It has five inch stars.

And those subsequent molds produce more and more brown, so often later in the season, we find wooly bear caterpillars that have more brown on them.

But some folklore says if the brown is white and there's a black head that is very, very long or much longer than the black tail, as in the case of this little specimen, then that means the start of the winter the head will be colder than the end of the winter.

There was even an entomologist, Dr. Koren, from the American Natural History Museum, who in 1948 would go out into the woods, collect the caterpillars, and he would count the segments on each caterpillar he collected to see if it was brown or black.

And he published a study that said, Well, you know what?

It shows me that there's a lot of brown hair on these caterpillars so I think it's going to be a mild winter.

He made a prediction and that kind of stuck.

It was published widely in magazines and literature, so that little bit of folklore has kind of hung with us.

But again, what entomologists now tell us is if there is a lot of brown on a caterpillar, it is also related to the previous winter if that winter was long.

That means there was a shorter spring, which means wooly bear caterpillars had less time to feed, and so therefore they had a compressed molting sequence.

And they might not have as much brown on their body.

It's still fun when you find wooly bear caterpillars to think about whether or not it's going to be a mild or severe winter.

In this case, there's a lot of brown, so I'm hanging my hopes on the fact that it'll be a mild winter.

In the meantime, I'm going to take this little one and tuck it into the wood pile behind me so it has a place to hibernate this winter.

Remember, you can find your own outdoor elements when you visit area parks and natural areas.

We'll see you soon.