The Tale of a Moth...
Offline A few months ago, I was outside painting when I noticed a light-green caterpillar about 3½ inches long with red spots along its side scooting down a tree which looked like this:
I couldn't help myself, I had to take it inside and figure out what it was. Having worked all day, I decided to identify it after resting. The next day, I looked inside my terrarium and couldn't find him. After looking for an hour, I learned why I couldn't find him—he took one of the fake leaves on my log-thingy and glued it together as a funnel for his cacoon, like this:
I decided to take the whole log-thingy outside and put it in a tree, as I figured the night-day cycle was important to its development. After a few weeks went by with nothing happening, I thought it died, since I thought it was a Luna Moth caterpillar that comes out after 2-2½ weeks. (I thought I killed it by moving it in and out of the terrarium, throwing it off and preventing its proper development.)
Thinking it died, I decided to cut open the cacoon. I seen a little brown body inside, like an extended, wrinkly acorn. I thought: gross but totally cool! I couldn't find a good picture of what I seen, but you can get an idea by this:
I brought it close to my face to get a close look and I seen the wing structures wrapped around it and many little veins—really cool. Then it's little brown butt started swinging! That startled me, causing me to drop it on its ugly little head. I was happy I didn't kill it, but then I realized I probably just did kill it because it no longer had a cacoon to protect it—damn it.
I thought, I'll just place him and his rotating brown butt into his cacoon and take him inside, back into the terrarium; he'll probably die, but it'll give him a chance.
Today, it came out! It wasn't a Luna Moth like I expected, it was a female Polyphemus Moth 
As you can see, I gave her a bit of a bald spot—oops! After taking those pictures, it was time to set her loose:
As she flew to the tree (above), I seen her little butt shaking—some things never change!
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
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Aw that is so cool!
When I was 7, I raised monarch butterflies one summer. The caterpillars were given to me at a summer program I participated in, and we were instructed how to care for them. They started out in a small container, and once the two caterpillars were in their coccoons, I moved them to their "butterfly habitat" that I built for them. One night I went to check on them, and saw that one coccoon was all shriveled; I panicked because I thought that it had died! But then something fluttered and I realized that its transformation was complete! (The other one "hatched" the next day.)
It was a really sad day letting them go. I cried when I released them, because they were like children to me. (I had named them & could tell them apart since their larva stage.) But they sat and crawled around on me for awhile before finally going out into the wild, so my mom got some cute pictures of me holding them. And we saw them around in the garden a lot for the rest of the summer.
Anyways, wanted to say that you got some great pictures, and thanks for sharing your experience.
Indeed. Awesome. Who is not awestruck 24/7 ? Only the blind need to invent, and follow religion dogma crap. Religion is godless retardation .... The "miracle" is all existence, every particle, every moment. There is nothing separate to worship.
Thanks , LOL
Atheism Books.
That's pretty cool! I don't think I've ever seen a caterpillar or moth that big! Mind you I live in the crappest country in the world for any form of wildlife.
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Goddess, you had a butterfly habitat? That's cool. Ever thought of setting up another one? The world could use more butterflies. (Or flutterbys, as I like to call them.) Just find the plants they like in their caterpillar and butterfly stages and plant them nearby, they'll do the rest themselves
About two years ago, I got my yard certified as a wildlife habitat for birds through the National Wildlife Federation. I've since changed my yard around to attract practically everything. I enoy sitting outside relaxing, watching birds and moths and butterflies fluttering, rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks scampering, and the snakes slithering and frogs hopping to the pond for a mid-day cool-down, but let's not forget the toads, lizards, turtles, deer, and the thousands of insect species—sadly, I've yet to see the elusive four-legged kind
Occassionally, I see the red teeth and claws of nature. Saddening, but sometimes cool. About three times a year, I see a hawk swoop down and grab a mourning dove, leaving a cloud of feathers in its wake. I have two male ruby-throated hummingbirds that constantly fight one another over a female. If I were a bird, I'd be afraid of those tiny things. They're like apache helicopters with huge swords. One time, a snake bit my dog. Admittedly, I let it. I tried getting Paco (full name is Apocalypse Dogon Sirius, a play on words about the Dogon tribe of Mali) to back off but it wouldn't, so I let him learn his lesson the hard way, complements of the ratsnake. (Mind you, I knew the snake wasn't poisonous and I've been bit by them before so I had no fear for my dog's safety.) A month later, a snake raised up at me and I never seen that species before. Paco, though he wanted to kill it for raising up at me, simply let it slither through the yard unbothered. It was a pine snake, a species fairly close to the endangered species list, so I was glad that Paco learned his lesson and didn't attack it. Despite almost soiling my pants when it raised up at me, it was a very cool sight.
Sometimes, the places you find things surprises you. As a reptile lover, I always looked for tree frogs. I had seen only one in 3½ years and I was disappointed on a regular basis when I went looking for some. One spring, while cleaning the pool, I hit the jackpot: five in one place! Can you guess where they were? A tree? Nope. On the ground? Nope. In the pool? Sort of. Where the PVC pipes slide through the pool lining at the top, there's a small gap underneath the pipes, which is where they were hiding. The enclosure kept them entirely safe and they didn't even have to work to catch food, as their food always flew toward the pool. Clever!
You really should set up a butterfly habitat, or an all-around habitat if you want. There's a lot of great experiences that come with them.
IAGAY, I agree about being awestruck. Those who aren't awestruck are not thinking, as far as I'm concerned. When sitting outside, I often try visualizing the millions of cells in the plants and animals, the photons striking them, the particles rushing by them and receiving vibration from them to cool them down, and all these things working together as an entire ecosystem and how that ecosystem has evolved through the ages alongside hundreds of other ecosystems on a single globe among many that orbit our one star among many that whirl around inside one galaxy among many that whirl in one supercluster among many. It's absolutely mind-boggling. Even a majorly simplified visualization of just what happens in the perimeter of a few feet in my yard makes my head hurt, but the headaches have always been worth it
Jacob, that moth was huge with a wingspan of roughly 6½ inches. I was expecting a luna moth, which is also large, but I didn't know there were any species in my area that could compete with it. I was pleasantly surprised.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
DG ( or Hamby) wrote a very cool essay about how science increases our awe. In the same or another essay the foolishness of "new age" ideas are discussed. I looked but didn't find it (yet).
Atheism Books.
Man, is that caterpillar photo autenthic? I mean, so big? So green? And you really hold it in a hand?
I think that this larval form is exactly what the otherwise awesome and fascinating art of HR Giger lacks to an ultimate bizareness.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The caterpillar I caught was roughly 3½ inches long and as wide around as a jumbo marker. It had a slightly-translucent jade coloring.
Full Body Shot (coloring is much duller than the one I caught):
The following two pictures are closer.
Face Shot:
Notice the yellowish spot at the bottom of the picture above? That begins the area where you find the differently-styled legs at the middle of his body:
Anyway, I took some pictures of other things around my home. The most interesting one foretells The Tale of a Dozen Frogs
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!