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Deep in the Amazon, 'it was Donald Trump's hair hanging out on a tree'

Fred Barbash

By Fred Barbash The Washington Post

Published Sept. 30, 2016

Deep in the Amazon, 'it was Donald Trump's hair hanging out on a tree'
  Courtesy of Jeff Cremer Photography

Jeff Cremer says he's not much into politics.


His passion and his business is photography, specifically Jeff Cremer photography, based in Lima, Peru.


His pictures have appeared in National Geographic, among other places, and he leads photography tours through the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon taking pictures of the flora and fauna.


It was four years ago, he told The Washington Post, when he first spotted the yellow flannel moth caterpillar Megalopyge opercularis.


It looks friendly enough, being a little furry creature, but there's nothing friendly about it. The caterpillar - known as "ovejillo," or "little sheep" in Spanish - is not to be messed with, or mussed up. It's venomous, and has little hairs that he compares to tiny hypodermic needles that can inflict pain and cause itching on the person unlucky enough to encounter one.


"I saw a guy out in the jungle a few years ago who had brushed up against one," said Cremer, 38. "He had a huge welt on his shoulder."


They come in different colors but this one was bright yellow. And even back then, he said, it reminded him right away of Donald Trump's hair. "So we gave it the name Trump."


But who cared then?


Now everyone cares. And luckily, last week, when he was leading a group in the jungle, one of the members of the group called him over.


"While I was putting my boots on the guy said, 'Hey, there's a cool caterpillar on a tree over there.' I went over to see what it was and sure enough, it was Donald Trump's hair hanging out on a tree."


Cremer got busy, using a Canon 100 mm macro lens to get a close-up picture. Lucky for him, there was another one on the ground, and he used a Canon MPE-65 mm lens, which is like a microscope, to "get in super close."


"I needed to be careful when taking the pictures," he wrote in a follow-up email to The Post, "because there was a little breeze and the stinging hairs started coming off and floating around in the breeze. If one of them touched my skin or landed in my eye, it could have been a bad situation."


Cremer's latest pictures first appeared in LiveScience this week. In addition to the name Megalopyge opercularis, the cute but dangerous little caterpillar goes by a hashtag: #trumpapillar.

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