TODAY: Today is a big day for the Bradford Area Chamber of Commerce — it’s Oktoberfest and the chamber’s 26th annual public auction.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. at The Bradford Club, with the auction starting at 6:30 p.m.

It’s a big fundraiser for the chamber, and a lot of fun.

Tickets will be available at the door for $35 each.

COLOR: We had a reader contact us with a picture of something we hadn’t seen before — an all black caterpillar.

If this were a woolly bear caterpillar, that would mean a severe winter, if the folklore were true.

But Google tells us this might be the larval stage of the giant leopard moth. It is found across the eastern half of the United States and Canada.

According to the National Weather Service, its meteorologists are more accurate predictors of weather than these fuzzy insect.

“Even though it is widely believed that the woolly bear caterpillar can predict the upcoming winter’s severity, the truth is that this caterpillar can’t predict what Old Man Winter has in store for us in the upcoming winter,” the NWS website states.

“The woolly bear caterpillar’s coloring is based on how long caterpillar has been feeding, its age, and species. The better the growing season is the bigger it will grow. This results in narrower red-orange bands in its middle.

“Thus, the width of the banding is an indicator of the current or past season’s growth rather than an indicator of the severity of the upcoming winter. Also, the coloring indicates the age of the woolly bear caterpillar,” the site says. “The caterpillars shed their skins or molt six times before reaching adult size. With each successive molt, their colors change, becoming less black and more reddish. In addition, there are approximately 260 species of tiger moths (the adult of the woolly bear caterpillar) in North America, and each species has slightly different color patterns and hair coverings. As a result, some of the color and hair variations that we see each fall are a result of these different species.”