Day 307: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." No, but when I told Kevin I'd been chasing Police Cars, it only took him half a beat to reply, "Oh, you mean the flying kind." Clearly, he remembered reading my July 19 post which included a photo of this striking moth's blue caterpillar. Kevin knows me well. He doesn't bat an eye when I tell him I'm going over to the campground to look for Kidneys (Fringed Kidney lichens). Aside from my pursuits as a naturalist, he also knows that I enjoy playing with words. That said, my recent MeadoWatch hike engendered several high-speed chases as the Police Cars swerved dangerously across the trail, intersecting my path, sometimes coming to a brief halt on the Bistorts they seemed to prefer. Invariably, by the time I could get the camera disentangled from the GPS and my pack straps, my target Police Car would take another call. I was beginning to despair of getting a "field guide" shot showing all the relevant morphology, but then my visual radar picked up a black-and-white blip intensely involved in searching one particular Bistort head about fifty feet from my position. I edged in closer to get it within zoom range, hoping not to startle it into flight. Zoom photography is all well and good if you can find your subject and keep it centered as you pull it into focus, but when confronted with a meadow full of Bistort, it's amazingly difficult to find the right one. Fortunately, there was a Western Anemone seed-head close by which I could use as a guidepost, allowing me to bag the Police Car, photographically speaking. And then it was off, a two-inch moth with a strong sense of purpose not obvious from its erratic flight: eat, mate and die, having ensured a new generation to police the Bistort meadows of the Lakes Trail.
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