“I found these on my dog’s quilt”, writes Mary about the yellow creature pictured below. “They are very tiny, less than a quarter inch. It was the bright colour I noticed and I zoomed in with my camera. I’m in Ireland.” Now, Mary sends in a plethora of photos, which is always very helpful, and they all show us different things. Three of them depict this bright yellow creature: the first (below) shows us more details about its coloration (the darker spots amidst the bright color), the second shows us that the critter is enveloped in a stringy matter, or perhaps that the stringy matter is appendages growing from its body, and the third shows us the creature on top of a ten cent Euro coin, giving us a size comparison to show us how small it really is. Oddly though, Mary sends a fourth picture of what looks like a ball of tangled hair.

“Does anyone know what these brown rice-shaped casings are?” is all this reader asks in her submission regarding the ovate object pictured below. Well, to start with, we want to commend our reader on the excellent photo she has taken: it truly makes things easier when we try to identify the organisms our readers are asking about. When it comes to this particular organism, or potential “casing”, we would say this looks like a pupa. The pupal stage is the third one in an insect’s life cycle: the first being the egg stage, the second being the larval stage, and the third and final being the adult stage (when they have matured into a fully-formed insect, like a moth or a fly).