Storm Storm

Wednesday evening there was (another) huge thunder storm that battered and cracked.  The next morning I was surprised to find that the riverside road in Kacanik was closed and there was water.  The rains had washed tons of silt down from the hills and one of the side streams to the River Nerodime had its exit culverts blocked.  They were at it with diggers and lorries to break open a passage and to truck-away the sand, silt (and garbage – that is the sad addition to all waterways).

Last evening a landslide ran over onto the railway and a goods train and railcar were halted in Kacanik – and the Norweigan-Swedish combination were halted in a tunnel – while guys with picks and shovels worked for 5 hours to open the way.

Cream-spot Tiger Moth (Arctia villica)

The early summer feast of bugs bringing entertainment is continuing… and taxing my ability to identify what they are and what they might do…  I thought this was a Garden Tiger Moth in which case its body fluids are poisonous (but I wasn’t thinking of eating it).  Mary has better identified it as a Cream-spot Tiger Moth which apparently absorbs toxins to make itself red and then scary to things that might try to eat it.  I tried to coax it onto a sheet of glass to take a photo from under – but it decided I was a predator and made a distinctive flutter of wings (Albanian butterfly/moth = flutura) and disappeared into the night.