OPPOSITE: Kevin Abbott gave us a call about a wooly bear caterpillar he saw that contradicts the one seen by John DePetro.

“I saw one crawling across my living room carpet,” Kevin said. “I don’t know if I carried it in on my clothes or what.

“But this one was completely black. I’d never seen one like that before. When I touched it, it curled up like they always do.”

He took it outside and released it. And then he read RTS about another caterpillar with just a little bit of black.

“That’s a little different than my little friend,” Kevin said. “I don’t know if he knows something we don’t, like it’s supposed to be really cold or what.”

In a state where insects and animals are among the trusted weathermen, we don’t know who to believe, either.

The National Weather Service — not always the best predictor of weather either, really — says the caterpillar’s coloring is an indication of age, not weather.

“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 weather service says. “The woolly bear caterpillar’s coloring is based on how long the 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.”