Moth Caterpillars. by Jeffrey S. Pippen | Back to Jeff's Butterfly Page | Back to Jeff's Misc. Thanks to many folks who have helped me ID some of the creatures on this page, including Anurag Agrawal, John & Jane Balaban, Cheri Cameron, Pat Coin, Steve Hall, Sean Hitch, Josh Rose, and Steve & Dean.
Mad as a March hare. To be as mad as a March hare is an English idiomatic phrase derived from the observed antics, said to occur only in the March breeding season of the Hare, genus Lepus.
'Beware the Ides of March' is the soothsayer's message to Julius Caesar, warning of his death. The Ides of March didn't signify anything special in itself-this was just the usual way of saying March 15th. The notion of the Ides being a dangerous date was purely an invention of Shakespeare's; each month has an Ides (often the 15th) and this date wasn't significant in being associated with death prior to 1601.